


Rejoicing in Their Strength

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Horror, Hunting, M/M, Torture, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucius went mad after the war, and he has killed Narcissa and confined Draco to Malfoy Manor while he does magical experiments on him. Draco escapes at times by astral travel. During one of his journeys, he is astonished to find Harry Potter, who vanished after the war, living in the Forest of Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Major warnings for this one: **torture and gore** , bloody animal death, insanity, angst, character death (not Harry or Draco).

“Draco. How are you?”

Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was always worst when his father began the torture by talking to him pleasantly. It would be better if he could wear out that initial politeness and let the madness emerge. He lay motionless, as if asleep, and listened to his father padding nearer, his bare feet soft on the flagstones of the underground lab.

“Oh, Draco.” Lucius’s voice was soft with sorrow, which was worse still. “Do you think you can escape? You can’t. I have to cure you, and I’ll do that no matter how much you scream, because it’s my responsibility as your father to heal you.”

 _Worst of all_. Draco decided that he might as well meet his fate head-on, and sat up and turned sideways on the raised “bed” that Lucius confined him to whenever he wanted Draco to stay in the lab. A cage of blue light surrounded the bed, one that Draco could have done something about it if he had his wand. Of course, Lucius had seized that long ago, and he always kept Draco naked, so even if the cage did someday miraculously disappear, Draco wouldn’t get very far.

 _Not in any conventional way, at least._

Lucius examined him approvingly, and then nodded. “Much better, I think. The sores have cleared up, haven’t they?”

The “sores” were welts left from the last whipping Lucius had inflicted on him. Draco swallowed. “Yes, sir, they have,” he whispered.

Lucius stepped through the blue light as if it wasn’t there and laid a caressing hand on Draco’s shoulder. “You don’t need to say ‘sir’ to me,” he said, eyes clear and concerned. “I’m your beloved father. There should be no formality between us.”

 

Draco nodded, gaze on the ground. Of course, if he forgot to say “sir” and addressed Lucius by name, then the whippings and the “treatments” were worse. But Lucius never remembered that during the moments before the thickest madness descended.

“Good!” Lucius stepped back and clapped his hands. “I think we’ll try the salt treatment today. That one seems to be most effective.”

 _Then I’ll definitely have to go away_ , Draco thought, and closed his eyes as his father raised his wand and began to chant the spell that would turn Draco’s blood to salt in his legs. It hurt like nothing else (except some of the other cruel “treatments” Lucius had thought up) and Draco simply couldn’t stay in his body and bear it.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fight. But without a wand, and against a wizard of Lucius’s power and insane determination—against the man who had killed his mother—it was impossible.

When he heard the first syllables of the spell echoing off the stone walls, Draco snapped his spirit out of his body and _went_.

*

Draco opened his eyes to find himself hovering in a dark purple mist lit by small silver sunbursts, which resolved into five-pointed stars if he looked at them closely enough. He could feel nothing, which wasn’t a surprise. His “body” here was a wispy thing, formed out of spirit and fog, so transparent the stars could easily shine through it. But he could see and hear, and that was enough for him.

He didn’t know if this place in between the house where his body lay and his destinations was real or not. He wasn’t entirely sure that the visions he saw when he “traveled” were real. But that didn’t matter, as long as they took him away from Lucius. 

_It’s not as though I’ll ever get to use my information to threaten anyone or earn freedom_ , he thought sardonically. He’d tried, in the days when he thought he might still be able to get access to Floo powder or an owl. Lucius had cast a spell that Draco recognized in retaliation, one that would cut off his fingers if he went near either one again.

 _Though isn’t that counterproductive, that you fight to keep your body whole when dying would mean you were free_?

Draco shook his head. He had long since stopped questioning most of the decisions he made. He thought he was going mad himself, but there was so little he could do to help that that he ignored the sensation and went ahead.

Into the future. Seeking some possibility of escape.

 _That’s what brought you here_ , Draco reminded himself, and then turned his gaze towards the transparent dark blue floor beneath him. He wanted to go somewhere green tonight, somewhere wild, where freedom still sang in the open and walked beneath the branches. It hardly mattered where his magic took him. No one had ever shown the ability to see him. Otherwise, Draco would have used _this_ method to seek out help.

As always, once he had pictured a likely destination in his mind, the magic that drove him this far reached out and chose a place. A cord suddenly snapped taut between Draco and that place, and his “body” hurtled down through the misty floor like a diving hawk.

Draco rushed into green light, and golden. He blinked in surprise. He hadn’t realized Lucius was torturing him during daylight. Of course, it was rather easy to lose track of time in a dungeon.

All around him, tall trees reached arched branches to the sky. The grass and moss underneath were littered with only occasional briars or weeds; Draco thought the trees had blocked the sunlight from reaching the forest floor. Drifts of autumn leaves from last year, now mostly black, were more common. 

And right in front of him was a tall young woman with long tawny hair, walking along a sandy trail with a swinging stride.

Draco thought of leaving again, and the simple action made the forest grow mistier around him. He had wanted a completely uninhabited place. The presence of this woman suggested it wasn’t.

One thing made him stay and look more closely at the woman, though. She had sticks tangled into and woven through her hair. Why would anyone, even someone camping in the woods, bear that instead of stopping to pick them out?

The longer he looked—his spirit automatically flashed through the woods after the woman as she moved on—the more oddities he saw. Her feet were bare. Dirt was worked in under her fingernails, most of which were broken. A series of white scars crisscrossed her left forearm, resembling bites. 

_Probably she’s just a Muggle runaway_ , Draco silently argued with himself. _Or someone camping who hasn’t had the chance to bathe yet. There’s no reason for me to stay._

He could at least look in on her destination, though. That might prove entertaining. Draco was continually amused, now that he had the leisure to examine them, about the sorts of hardships that Muggles put themselves through. He hadn’t had the chance to see the way they scrambled in the wild.

The woman rounded a corner in the trail and came out into the middle of a wide glade. Draco blinked and glanced around. The only way he might have seen this clearing was from above; it was well-hidden by a thick wall of trees that drew back abruptly to reveal the open space of grass. In fact, he thought the abruptness unnatural. Someone had cut those branches that might have projected beyond the wall.

“Celia!”

Draco turned around—though as quickly as the magic made him move, it was more like reappearing facing another way. He saw three other people jogging out of the clearing to meet the woman. There were no tents, Draco saw. He blinked and stared harder, wondering what sort of crazy Muggles he’d stumbled on.

Then he realized there were faint, misty shapes in the air, which suggested houses covered with a Disillusionment Charm. He’d stumbled onto wizards.

 _Why would wizards be living in the middle of a forest, and looking like that?_

The woman, whose name seemed to be Celia, laughed and held out her arms to the first person who came to meet her. He was a young man with dark hair and brilliant blue eyes, and he waved a wand that removed the dirt and the twigs and the grass stains efficiently from Celia. The bite scars stayed, Draco noticed; they must have belonged to a much older wound. 

“How was it?” asked the man, grinning.

“Harder than I thought it would be,” Celia admitted, and turned so that his wand could wave over the twigs clinging to her hair. “For one thing, whatever our exalted leader says, it’s _not_ natural to go a week without a bath.”

The man rolled his eyes, while the tall woman behind him, who had streaks of grey in her hair and bright black eyes, laughed. “He says that it’s necessary to ‘embrace our lupine nature’ and ‘learn to control ourselves when the change comes,’” she said, altering her voice to a timbre that Draco almost recognized. “Of course, he would. He’s been more successful than any of us at it.” She brushed her hair away from her neck, and Draco saw the same sorts of white scars there that decorated Celia’s arm.

That, combined with her comment about “lupine nature,” made Draco shiver. _They’re a werewolf pack. They must be._

He thought about willing himself away from there. On the other hand, none of them could see him, either; he was standing right beside Celia, and no one had said anything yet. And they could hardly hurt him when his body was immaterial and any bite would go through him. Besides, Draco didn’t think it was the full moon yet.

And he was interested, more interested than he had been in anything in a long time.

“You’re always agreeing with him, Leila.” Celia looked at her from beneath a strand of hair as the man charmed the last of the twigs out of it. “I find it tiresome.”

“At least I’m here to argue with him,” said the third person, who had been standing behind the man and whom Draco had failed to pay much attention to until now. She was another woman, though small and slim enough she might have passed for a teenage boy from a distance. Her hair was red like a Weasley’s, but she had no freckles. Draco was relieved. There was only so much of an assault that his eyes could stand. “So you can give thanks for that.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t,” the man murmured idly, though the tension in his shoulders as he stepped back from Celia told Draco it wasn’t idle at all. “How many people have you nearly eaten now?”

The small woman moved forwards, bristling. Her red hair seemed to stand on end, and she was actually showing her teeth. The man fell into a defensive crouch, his wand weaving back and forth in front of him. Celia looked torn between amused and alarmed. Leila folded her arms and rolled her eyes.

“Enough.” The authoritative voice spoke from a house that Draco thought stood farther away from the others, though he hadn’t paid much attention to those arrangements yet, enthralled as he was with watching the people. “Josh, you should know better than to tease Hyacinth. Her wolf is stronger than the rest of ours, that’s all.”

“Except yours,” said Josh, looking grateful for an excuse to put his wand away. Hyacinth relaxed and let her lips drop back over her teeth.

“The harder the struggle, the worthier the victory.” The voice sounded as if it were quoting something.

Draco turned around, finally, to look at the man who could make angry werewolves calm down, and found himself staring at Harry Potter.

Potter leaned against the invisible house behind him, one heel cocked to rest on the wall, his arms folded like Leila’s, his green eyes wary and brilliant at the same time. There was no doubt it was him; the shaggy hair still slid apart to show the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. But he had changed, and Draco didn’t think the slightly ragged clothing or the scarred bite visible on his right shoulder were the biggest parts of it. 

He carried an aura of _power_ with him now. Draco couldn’t feel anything in his spiritual state, and yet this reached out to him and crackled around him the way it seemed to crackle around Potter’s fellow werewolves. It was a soothing lightning, if such a thing existed. It threatened greater strength than any Draco could command and promised protection. If he would only yield, then he could lean on that strength and be comforted and sheltered for the rest of his life.

It was so long since Draco had felt anything like it that he found himself staring, enchanted.

Potter looked past his pack, and his eyes abruptly fastened on Draco. He started forwards with an exclamation, his hand stretched out. “ _Malfoy_?”

Draco panicked. No one was supposed to be able to see him when he was traveling like this. He had been in more than one situation where it would be dangerous to be discovered, but this would be the most dangerous of all.

The other werewolves were swinging around to look at him now, their confused voices making a chorus that haunted Draco. If someone discovered what had happened to him—if they mocked him because he hadn’t been strong enough to escape from Lucius—

He leaped without thinking, and snapped back into his body. At once the burning along his veins twined around him like loops of strangling rope, and he screamed.

“A better reaction than I’ve had for some time,” Lucius said, sounding pleased. His hand stroked down Draco’s back and pressed firmly in the middle of his spine, as if he thought that he could urge further cries out of him that way. “Yes. _Do_ scream, Draco. A purging of pain is necessary to rid you of the disease, and, alas, the only way to purge pain is to suffer it.”

It was too much. He hadn’t been braced to endure the agony, since he hadn’t felt anything until this very moment. Draco buried his head in his arms and wept, while Lucius stroked his back and his hair and murmured soothing nonsense words.

His father’s wand was always ready with a Rennervate whenever Draco passed out.

*

Later, when he was lying in the soft bed that Lucius sometimes gave him after he had tortured him and wincing as lingering jolts of shock and pain ran through his muscles, Draco found his mind returning to what he had seen of Potter’s little werewolf pack. 

It was _impossible_ that Potter could have seen him simply because he was a werewolf. The others hadn’t been able to, if their yelps of confusion were any indication. And Draco had been around people before in his spiritual travels, though not by choice, including people who had known him much more intimately than Potter. None of them had betrayed the slightest awareness of his presence.

 _If they had_ , Draco thought, curling up into a position that left his head buried in his arms but his legs stretched out, _then I wouldn’t have spent so much time cooped up in this house with a madman._

His heart leaped with wonder then, and he paused and swallowed, wondering if he dared reveal his situation to Potter and ask for help—

But he rejected the notion in the next instant. Potter had made it all too clear during their schooldays that he would love to see pain inflicted on Draco of exactly the kind that Lucius was inflicting. He had even done it himself with the _Sectumsempra_ Curse. Why would he spare any effort to rescue Draco now?

Draco wanted the pain to end, but if it had to continue, then he would prefer to deal with it himself. He didn’t want the memory of mockery to ring in his ears.

And the pain would never end.

Despair rose above him and came down as a great black crashing wave, burying him fathoms deep in silence and darkness.

*

 _Your mind doesn’t make any sense._

It _didn’t_ make any sense for him to have returned to the forest to observe Potter’s little werewolf camp, Draco acknowledged to himself. He had every reason to stay far away. Fear of mockery, fear of what else Potter might be able to do to him if he could see Draco, fear of encountering savagery and bloodlust instead of the peace he needed to see on these journeys, fear of Potter enlisting other people who might able to sense him—because if one could, maybe others could—in the hunt for Draco…

 _All of them boil down to fear._

Draco shrugged. It had been months since his existence had consisted of anything else. 

He wondered for a moment if he was going mad, because this was the most irrational thing he had done since Lucius had imprisoned him. But he rejected the thought, shouted at it and broke it over his knee. Lucius had encouraged Draco to distrust his own perceptions from the first day he tortured him, told him that he was sick and shouldn’t fight the pain because it was meant to help him. He hadn’t forced Draco down that road so far. Draco would not travel it on his own.

So he stood behind the trees, because if Potter could see his spirit form there was at least no indication that he could see Draco through solid objects, and watched the werewolf pack going about their day.

Josh, the only man in the pack besides Potter, was practicing what seemed to be meditation, crouching on a woven grass mat with his eyes closed and breathing slowly. Celia, the woman Draco had followed through the forest the other day, was reading a book which she moved her lips over; Draco had sneaked as close as he dared, but still couldn’t see the title. Leila, who apparently agreed with everything Potter said— _as if he could make a home in the wilderness without at least one of his little sycophants around_ —hummed under her breath as she brewed a potion that had the smell and consistency of Wolfbane. An impromptu lab had been set up under the trees at the very edge of the clearing, and Draco, after watching Leila for a time, had to admit she was clever in substituting some forest-given ingredients for rarer ones she was obviously missing.

Potter sat in the shade of a flowering bush not far from one of the disgusted houses and talked softly to the woman named Hyacinth. 

Draco sneered at that at first. Of _course_ everyone else in the pack would be busy and devoted to their tasks, while Potter did what he could to avoid work. And Hyacinth didn’t look as if she particularly welcomed the conversation. She stared over Potter’s head into the forest, her eyes slitted and her breath moving in rasping huffs over her bared teeth. Potter was probably just talking to hear the sound of his own voice.

But when he had spent a few hours watching them, Draco noticed something else. Another half-hour, and he had to admit it existed, against all his inclinations and all his prior knowledge of Potter.

Hyacinth had started out with her teeth bared and her expression uninterested. But slowly, she uncoiled and turned her head towards Potter like a sunflower tracking the sun. By now she was lying with her hands folded underneath her chin like a wolf with its head on its paws and watching him with a dull wonder. Before, Draco would have said that she was on the verge of snapping and running like the wild thing she was into the trees; now she seemed calmer and more human.

Celia regularly glanced up from her book at Potter. Josh turned in his meditation so that he could face him. Leila would finish a stage of the Wolfsbane, shake her head, take a satisfied breath, and then look so that she could catch a glimpse of him over her shoulder.

Potter was the center of his little pack’s existence, as thoroughly as the sun was the center of the solar system.

Draco curled his lip. He laughed—under his breath, because he wasn’t sure how much of his speech Potter could hear. He pictured Potter lounging under the adoration of the pack like a spoiled prince, every now and then showing his scar so that he could produce excited little squeals.

But the effort to make himself despise Potter for ruling the lives of his companions didn’t work, because Draco could feel the effect of that strength. 

His father had taught him to worship power, and however much Draco rejected the later manifestations of that attitude, he remembered it as something comforting in childhood. If one of his friends injured him or argued with him, he could rest secure in the knowledge that his father would do something about it. Lucius was a man others cowered before. Draco remembered several times standing tall and proud at his side and seeing someone else slink away with lowered eyes.

It wasn’t comfortable to have that same strength wielding a whip over you or causing fungus to grow through your skin, of course. But when you could lean on it, shelter within it…

And Potter’s strength was a palpable aura around him, and his packmates obviously reveled in it.

Finally, Potter stood, with Hyacinth lying at his feet and drowsing in the sunlight. Josh and Celia turned around immediately. Leila took a bit longer, involved as she was in the potion, but she finally glanced up, and then whipped around as if she’d committed some offense in not responding to Potter at once.

Potter nodded and started speaking. His eyes moved constantly from face to face, but that didn’t give Draco an impression of nervousness; instead, he seemed to be checking for any sign that his people didn’t understand his words. Draco stirred unhappily. That was the kind of leader he’d thought the Dark Lord was, once. It still hurt to remember how wrong he’d been.

 _Enough of pain. Enough of fear. I’m here to observe something that doesn’t concern me and forget for a little while_. So Draco did his best to pay attention to Potter’s words. They were loud enough, God knew. Potter hadn’t lost his liking for making speeches.

“Tomorrow’s the full moon. We’ll have the potion, but remember: this isn’t about _subduing_ the wolf. If we wrestle with it, it’s angry and becomes harder to control later, and we’re condemning ourselves to a life of needless guilt, because it _can’t_ be banished completely. I knew someone whose entire life was a misery because he decided that he was a monster, even when he didn’t hurt people, simply because the wolf existed.” Potter’s eyes grew distant for a moment.

 _Lupin_ , Draco thought, remembering the scruffy Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. _Yes, he looked like someone who hated his life and probably felt needlessly guilty._

“It isn’t about giving in to the wolf, either,” Potter continued, apparently because his daily quota of looking Pale and Stern and Noble hadn’t been fulfilled yet. “The ones who do that become true monsters, like Fenrir Greyback.” His right hand made an aborted little movement that rendered Draco dead certain Greyback had been the cause of Potter’s own bite. “No, we have to pursue the middle course, and be both human and wolf at once. That’s the reason I’ve had you living ‘wild’ in the forest, the way that some of you have complained about.” He looked directly at Celia.

“It’s the living without a _bath_ that I object to,” Celia muttered, pushing strands of tawny hair away from her face and frowning at Potter.

Potter smiled. “I know it takes some time to get used to,” he said. “But the last time I transformed, I did it with the potion in my body and my mind calmed and soothed by having listened to _some_ of the wolf’s impulses. It’s a delicate balancing act, but it’s the kind we have to perform if we don’t want to lose our minds.”

“I don’t want to lose _mine_ ,” Hyacinth said, lifting her head and shaking herself off as if she’d been immersed in water. “I just don’t believe that this is going to work. And if I don’t believe it will work, then it won’t.” Her voice was full of gloomy satisfaction.

Potter dropped to a crouch in front of her and tucked his hands under her chin. “Don’t give up,” he whispered. His voice was low, but intense enough that the hair on the back of Draco’s neck stood up. “And it’s not a simple matter of belief. Nothing’s simple anymore, now that we’ve got the wolves inside us. If you fight—and I know you’re a fighter, Hyacinth—then you can achieve that balance.”

The pack became still, staring at Potter, who seemed to be sending out invisible ripples of confidence. Draco sneered. _To be that dependent on one person would make me ill._

But he could see the temptation of it. If there was someone who was counseling him to hold on to his sanity while Lucius tortured him, because someday he would come and pull Draco out of the Manor…

Draco shredded the fantasy. Start thinking like that and he would go mad whether he wanted to or not.

Potter stood up when Hyacinth lowered her head and glanced from one member of the pack to another. He acted as if he could see each of their souls when he looked into their eyes. Draco knew he really couldn’t, but he had to admit, grudgingly, that it was a good act.

“We are going to dance with our wolves,” Potter said. “And we are going to _lead_ the dance, not stumble hopelessly through it.”

Everyone nodded as if hypnotized. Draco snorted.

Potter immediately took a step forwards, his head cocked. Draco froze again, but it wasn’t enough, because Potter gave a single deep sniff and then said, in a voice that had descended several levels, “Malfoy, why don’t you come out of hiding? I know you’re there.”

Terrified, Draco snapped himself back to his body again. At least what Lucius was doing to him was an evil he understood.


	2. Chapter 2

That morning, it was rats.

Draco didn’t even bother trying to stay in his skin. He fled into the astral world as soon as Lucius brought the first cage into the room. 

*

There had been signs of madness long before Lucius had actually begun to torture him, Draco thought, as he hovered in the middle of the purple mist and examined a few of the nearer stars, which acquired extra points when he did so. His father had always been prone to sharp stares and odd remarks. He had laughed when one of the first Slicing Spells Draco practiced cut a snake in half, and refused to have the house-elves remove it or kill it himself, instead intent on showing Draco how it could writhe and snap futilely at the air as it died.

But without the eventual torture, Draco had to admit, none of those small signs would have meant anything to him.

Instead, Lucius had begun to go downhill as soon as he got out of Azkaban. They were all confined to house arrest and would be for two years. Lucius had taken to staying in his library and reading Dark Arts books more and more often. His mother, her arm around Draco’s shoulders, had whispered that it was his father’s means of coping with his loss of power and freedom and Draco was to leave him alone while he studied.

Draco had. He mourned the loss of his own pride and self-respect, and so he understood what Lucius was feeling.

He thought.

Then he had trudged into the dining room for another cheerless meal one night and seen fleshy wires strung above the table. Draco had halted and blinked at them, and at the red chunks of meat dangling from them, not understanding. 

“Do you like it?” Lucius asked behind him, voice regretful. “When I learned that your mother was sick, I knew the only cure was to hang her by her own nerves and tendons from the ceiling.”

Draco shuddered and closed his eyes tightly. He could never forgive the self of his memory for standing there like an oaf, staring up at the ceiling and opening and closing his mouth as if he would find some answer in himself to what Lucius had done.

Maybe he could have got out of the house, if he ran swiftly enough. Maybe he could have snatched his broom and flown, and when he crossed the wards that warned of a Malfoy breaking his house arrest and the Aurors responded to the alarm, Draco could have told them about Lucius. They would have believed him even before they saw the ruin of Narcissa’s body. They were always willing to believe any evil of a Malfoy.

Instead, Draco had stood there and let Lucius take his arm and whisper into his ear, “You’re sick, too. You’re tainted by Dark magic. But don’t worry. Your cure will be less drastic than hers. I just have to find it.”

 _Dark magic, indeed_ , Draco thought, closing his eyes and flipping his spiritual body around in the air, for the sheer fun of doing something he would never be able to do again with his physical body. _As if I’d ever touch the stuff again. It was Dark magic that unbalanced his mind in the first place. Had to be._

It was easy for Lucius to fool the Aurors when they came. They weren’t interested enough in the fate of the Malfoys to look too closely. Lucius created a convincing illusion of his wife that moved up and down stairs, sat at the table, and stared haughtily. As for Draco, he was present in his own body, with the glamour of clothes on him—Lucius said that being actually clothed would delay his “healing”—and a big fake smile plastered on his face. Lucius, meanwhile, did most of the talking, glittering and witty and putting the Aurors at their ease. His wand spun lightly beneath his fingers under the table, giving great jolts to the glamoured collar that Draco wore about his neck at those times and which would kill him if he attempted to speak a word out of turn.

Just because Lucius had gone mad did not mean he had gone stupid. More was the pity, as Draco would have had some chance at escape if he had.

No help to be found in the Aurors. No help to be found _anywhere_ , since it was not as though Draco would be able to alert anyone when he traveled in a body that was invisible to everyone. 

Draco opened his eyes again, and watched the stars change as he flipped heels over head and head over heels.

_You know there is one person who can see you, or at least sense you. Harry Potter._

Draco began to shiver and couldn’t stop.

Potter was a werewolf, and Draco knew the change made people into Dark creatures. Potter hadn’t _sounded_ like one, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one. And Draco had never been able to trust Potter. Why should he assume that he could now? If Potter heard his story, and laughed at him, and left him there…

Draco knew he would then be even further down the road to madness than he had been before. 

Still, there was one thing Potter might be able to do for him. Draco needed some amusement and diversion when he was away from home and traveling. Someone who could see him, and might be willing to talk to him, would be both.

Potter had his own secrets to hide, that was certain. Draco occasionally heard bits and scraps of news from the Aurors, though not much. Surely one of them would have mentioned if their hero had been bitten by a werewolf and exiled from the wizarding world. It would be exactly the sort of gossip that most of the public would relish while pretending to be sorry about.

Draco _needed_ to be in a position of power in relation to someone. Taunting Potter with the revelation of his secrets would assure that.

Draco turned and dived towards the forest where he had seen Potter again, making sure this time to imagine garments clinging to his usually naked spiritual body. Powerful people did not appear naked outside their private rooms.

*

The werewolves’ clearing boiled with a restlessness that made Draco think he was standing in the middle of a kettle. This time, he could feel the aura of strength and lightning from every member of the pack, not just Potter.

Which he was glad of, because it gave him something entertaining to watch. Potter was nowhere in sight at the moment.

Celia and Josh were wrestling in the center of the clearing, grasping one another’s arms and necks, throwing one another from their feet, dodging clumsy grabs and taunting each other. Draco winced as he heard the fleshy thump with which their bodies hit the ground. Of course, they were both werewolves and had supernatural strength, especially this close to the full moon. 

Leila was sitting in the door of one of the houses, frowning at a book that looked like it might be the same one Celia had been reading yesterday. Draco dared to come closer this time since no one was present who could see him, and raised his eyebrows at the title. _Discovering Inner Strength._

 _That doesn’t sound like something any of them need to do_ , he thought, glancing over his shoulder again in the direction of Celia and Josh.

He understood the book’s title better when he saw Hyacinth lying in the shade of the flowering bush where Potter had spoken to her yesterday. She was panting, her sides rising and falling, and there was a dark flush to her skin that made her look as if she was sick. Draco crouched next to her and stared at her tightly shut eyes. 

She made soft little sounds which he took for part of the panting at first, and then realized were muted growls.

 _Potter said something about her wolf being stronger than the rest of theirs_ , Draco remembered. _I suppose she takes the full moon harder than they do._

Even as he watched, Hyacinth flowed to her feet—Draco started back reflexively, even though she simply passed through him as if he were a ghost—and turned to look at the forest. Draco looked with her, but saw nothing. Hyacinth growled again and turned three times in a circle, flinging herself down like a dog. Her eyes, which had a distinct golden glaze to them, stared over Draco’s head into the distance.

“Malfoy. Mind telling me why you’re here?”

Draco swallowed. Potter had come up behind him. He slowly redirected himself so that he was looking towards Potter, helped by the way that Hyacinth’s gaze was steadily pointed in the right direction. It was obvious what she’d been waiting for now.

Potter leaned against a tree, cloaked in an aura like a storm. His arms were folded, his face remote and stern, and his eyes golden-green like grass striped with sunlight. Oddly enough, Draco found himself taking heart from the posture and the stare. It was so exactly like the way he had expected Potter to look.

“I was in the area and thought I would take a look,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Potter narrowed his eyes and took a deep and deliberate sniff. The rest of the pack was drawing in now, glancing from Potter to the patch of air that contained Draco. Draco waited gleefully for questions about Potter’s sanity to begin. It would be nice to have some company.

But it seemed the pack trusted their leader too much to ask those kinds of questions. Celia did murmur, “Someone’s there we can’t see.”

“Yes,” Potter said. He spoke softly and reassuringly, though he still kept his gaze on Draco as though measuring him up as a threat. “I can see him, though, and smell him, and hear him. He’s an old schoolmate of mine, Draco Malfoy, who went under house arrest a few years back.” He cocked his head, and Draco was reminded of nothing so much as a dog about to scratch its ears. “This is your way of evading the law and exploring all the places that you won’t get to see while you’re under house arrest, then.”

It was a ready-made excuse, and Draco seized it gratefully. He shrugged and tried to look as bored as he was pretending to be. “Got it in one, Potter. Now. Mind telling me how it is that you can sense me when no one else could before?”

Potter smiled slightly, despite the chorus of growls from behind him and Leila’s mutter about how he didn’t have to converse with someone who was breaking the law already. “The werewolf’s power is a power of the body,” he answered. “It changes the body, it sharpens the senses, it turns our eyes a different color. Some people think it corrupts the soul, too, but I don’t agree with them—as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve listened to my words in any detail.” He shrugged. “I’ve already noticed that I can sense things I never could before. I can smell a scent of lingering love around abandoned houses that people cared greatly for, for example. I can sense faded ghosts who have mostly moved on to the afterlife. And I can sense you.” His nostrils fluttered again, as if he were trying to memorize Draco’s scent so that Draco could never take him by surprise again.

“Then why can’t your happy band of faithful followers see me?” Draco tossed his head at the other werewolves.

“They haven’t been as calm and as centered as I have been for long enough.” Potter ran a hand through his hair. “Most werewolves, who try to deny what they are, never pay enough attention to the wolf’s senses, and the ones who give in completely exist in a world of madness where one perception is pretty much the same as another. _They_ might be able to see you, but they wouldn’t know what they were looking at.” He gave Draco a narrow smile. “Those words only apply to the human form, by the way. They’ll all be able to see you when they shift.”

Draco gave a small shudder and silent thanks that he had never come across a pack of werewolves while he was traveling like this. Then he reminded himself that that was ridiculous. It wasn’t as though they’d be able to hurt him even if they could all see him.

“So, Potter,” he said. “How did you get bitten? Why are you living here with this ragtag band? It sounds as though it’s a secret you don’t want many people to know. What will you pay me not to reveal it?” Draco was enjoying himself hugely. Power surged through his veins in the way that, back in his body, the rats would be surging across his stomach.

Potter gave him a sharp smile in answer. Draco told himself that Potter’s teeth hadn’t really lengthened; that was vampires. “How are you traveling, Malfoy?” he asked. “It sounds as though a few Aurors would pay a lot of money to know that you’re evading house arrest and maybe spying on the inner workings of the Ministry.”

Draco panicked. If Potter told the Aurors, then it was certain word would get back to his father, and then his one escape would be taken away from him, and he really _would_ die under Lucius’s torments the way he had started to think he would.

Potter shook his head, eyes locked on Draco’s face. “You don’t need to worry,” he said. “I won’t betray your secret, as long as you tell me what it is, if you don’t betray mine. And you’ll receive my story in return.”

“ _Not wise_ ,” Hyacinth said, in a tone on the edge of a snarl.

It was stunning to see how quickly Potter’s face changed to a mask of tenderness at the sound of her voice. He turned and dropped to his knees beside Hyacinth, running his hands down her neck. “What is it?” he murmured. “Do you sense that it wouldn’t be wise for us to trust him? What do you smell?”

Hyacinth raised her head, eyes slitted and glazed. They locked on him, and Draco jumped. For just a moment, he was sure, she saw him, and he was equally sure that what looked out of her eyes at him was not human. 

“No sense,” Hyacinth whispered. “But a smell of blood, and death, and pain.” She turned away, whimpering, and tucked her head into her flank with a fluidity that half-convinced Draco she had already started to change. Potter spent a moment caressing her hair, his face bright with sorrow and determination both.

“One day,” he whispered to her, “a wolf of that strength will be a blessing. You’ll see.” Then he rose to his feet and turned to Draco. 

“A short trade,” he said. “The full moon is tonight, and I need to spend time with my people. But I want your promise that you won’t betray us. I give you my word that I’ll promise if you will.”

Draco felt himself relax, at least as much as he could when he didn’t have any solid muscles to uncoil. He nodded. “I never knew I had this ability,” he said. “I got bored one day, and wished so fervently to be away from the Manor that it just—happened. I can’t touch anything while I’m out here, only see and listen, so I can promise that I won’t hurt your pack.”

Potter considered him with glittering eyes for a long moment. Then he jerked his head down in a sharp nod and said, “And Fenrir Greyback bit me. The wizarding world would have gone mad if they knew. I didn’t feel like either being their martyr or a political test case. I wanted to balance with the wolf instead, studied how to do that, and decided that living in a wild environment would be best for now. Someday, when the rest of the pack and I have sufficient control, we’ll go back into the wizarding world. But we can’t for right now.”

He jerked his head again. “I promise not to reveal your secret. Now, go. Come back tonight if you want to see what we can achieve.”

So authoritative was his voice that Draco found himself jumping back into the astral world before he could reconsider. He hovered there, blinking, and licking his lips despite the fact that he couldn’t feel the touch of his tongue.

 _Someone can see me. He won’t betray me. It might be entertaining to watch a werewolf pack change. At least, it’s something I haven’t seen before._

And new things were of much value in the life he was living now.

*

Since he would probably lose track of time if he went back into the Manor—and Lucius had spoken about using iron as well as rats today—Draco chose a place “not far from the forest” to pass the time until night. That meant he spent the remaining hours of daylight staring at an unutterably boring town of Muggles, all of whom seemed to be engaged in frowning at boxes and taking paper out of boxes and listening to boxes and talking into boxes. Some of them shivered when he passed through the offices, and once a small box exploded. Delighted, Draco tried to make that happen again, but couldn’t. Maybe it was only a coincidence and not the Muggle devices responding to the magic of his astral form after all.

Obediently, he reappeared in the clearing that held the pack when the full moon was on the verge of rising. He shivered as he stared around, even though he couldn’t feel the cold—and it wouldn’t really be cold anyway, since it was June. The restlessness he had picked up from the werewolves earlier was now snapping, surging, soaring. Draco rubbed briskly at his intangible arms and had to resist the temptation to rush out of the clearing into the forest.

 _You’ve come from a place that’s even more dangerous_ , he reminded himself. _And once Potter gives a promise, he keeps it. He’s a Gryffindor, they can’t help themselves. You don’t need to think he’ll betray you._

The feeling went on boiling around him, but for long moments, he couldn’t see any of Potter’s pack. He kept turning in different directions, though, as though someone was staring at him.

And then, one by one, they began to emerge from their houses.

Hyacinth came first, already walking on all fours. She tilted her head back and shuddered as Draco watched. The next moment, she was twisting on the ground, her bones reshaping themselves, her skin growing a thick rusty pelt that couldn’t hide the sheer muscle of her. Draco listened to her howls of pain and wondered how in the world Potter could fool himself. No balance with the wolf was ever going to come out of _that_.

Celia and Josh both became tawny wolves, Josh with streaks of black on his muzzle and legs. Celia sneezed and jumped on Josh, wrestling with him, only cocking one eye and one ear at Draco before she did. Draco smiled cautiously. It seemed that Potter’s program had worked with those two, at least.

Leila was a black bitch with neat silver tips to her tail and ears, who sat in the doorway of her house and waved her tail lazily, watching the younger wolves with a knowing air that Draco found annoying. She spent some time staring at him, then snorted and looked away. Draco resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

Potter emerged last.

Draco stared despite himself. He had never thought a werewolf could be beautiful; he had always feared them as horrible monsters, and that was the last place you looked for something aesthetically pleasing. But Potter was a wolf with a body as dark as his hair, his black fur trailing off into warm brown on his legs, to almost a honey color on his paws. A single white line ran down the middle of his spine, and a ragged white mark on his forehead showed where the lightning bolt scar would be when he was human. He looked around at the pack, nodded to Draco, and then loped towards the other wolves.

Only when he was near Celia did Draco realize that Potter was also _big_. He didn’t look like it, because his muscles moved as smoothly as oil and he projected an air of quiet confidence, with power muted beneath it, as though he didn’t need to command. But his shoulder would at least reach Draco’s, at six feet high, and that air of relaxation made him seem larger still.

Celia and Josh stopped wrestling when they saw him and stepped forwards to rub their noses against his jaw, whining. Potter turned his head, and Leila joined them at a trot, tongue lolling as she nipped at Potter’s tail. Potter tilted his head, and Leila lay down as if scolded. 

Hyacinth joined them last. Draco cowered reflexively when he saw her. Her color had deepened to the scarlet of freshly spilled blood, her eyes were only a few shades lighter, and Potter overtopped her by an inch or less. If Potter was not here, Draco could see, she would have been the leader of the pack, no question.

_If she could have gathered them._

Because Hyacinth was a lone wolf, someone who would have become a monster like Fenrir Greyback. Draco could see that, too. Even with the Wolfsbane he was sure she had taken, or she would have been running mad through the forest, she was alternately panting and snapping, her wildness straining at its bonds.

Potter turned and glanced at her. For long moments, their eyes held. A throbbing growl that reminded Draco of Muggle engines worked its way up Hyacinth’s throat. She started to crouch, and the rest of the pack backed away in anticipation.

Potter didn’t crouch. He returned her stare boldly, instead, his body alert and his eyes curious. He didn’t look as though backing down or glancing away was an option.

Hyacinth’s growl stilled at last. She lowered her head and bowed over her extended forelegs instead, the way Draco had seen Crups do when they wanted to play. Potter leaned over and nipped her softly on the ear.

Then he tilted back his head and howled.

A chorus of howls answered him at once, an undulating wail of voices that rose up as if they would chase and bring down the stars. Draco could almost feel his pulse jumping and his throat drying out. He would have Apparated spontaneously at the sound of that if he was here in the flesh. 

As it was, he had nothing to fear, and the sounds were rather thrilling than otherwise.

Potter sprang ahead into the forest. Hyacinth was a stride behind him. Celia and Josh went flying in their wake like leaves, and Leila managed a respectable sprint at the back. 

And Draco, because his astral projection was willing himself to be in certain places rather than walking, could keep up.

He flashed from tree to tree, and always, somehow, Potter had got ahead. He was panting as he ran, his eyes gold with exhilaration, his feet flying so fast that Draco could see whirlwinds of dirt spinning up behind them. Those werewolf muscles worked for him, whether he was circling trees at a pace that made Draco dizzy or crouching to leap over a deadfall. Draco appeared next to an ancient oak and caught a perfect image of Potter in mid-jump, his forelegs thrown forwards, his hind legs extended back, his head up and his muzzle open to howl again in the sheer exaltation of the thing.

 _Trust Potter to find some way of flying even in this form_ , Draco thought.

The pack spread out as they traveled through the forest, communicating by tiny yelps and growls. Hyacinth ran ahead of Potter, and then she gave a belling call like a hound that Draco felt sure had some specific meaning. These were werewolves and not ordinary wolves, after all, and they weren’t limited to calls prescribed by instinct.

Potter howled in response, and then came the three voices that Draco hadn’t learned to distinguish yet. He had no interest in trying, either. He kept up with Potter instead, watching in rapt silence as the great black head swept down for a scent and then the powerful body tensed and skimmed through the trees.

Suddenly, something sprang out ahead with a noise of cracking branches that was like thunder to Draco. He started.

 _A deer._

Potter and his pack were coursing a hind who dodged madly to avoid them, who jumped small rivers and flitted like a shadow over the underbrush, who showed them a clean pair of heels so many times that Draco was sure she would get away. The werewolves had a lot of strength, but they weren’t tireless, and they’d already run for almost an hour by the time they found their prey; the moon was fully up.

But it didn’t seem to matter. On and on they piled, howls linking them, their panting breaths slicing through the silences in between howls, rejoicing in their strength. Draco lost himself in the sheer smoothness of their movement, or rather of Potter’s movement, because Potter was the one he accompanied and couldn’t tear himself away from. Now and then, he swore he could feel a prickling of tears at his eyes.

The hind turned at last in a small bay of rocks, foaming and snorting in her terror. Her legs shook until she almost lay down, but she forced herself backwards, and the rocks sheltered her flanks and sides from attack. The werewolves could only come at her from the front, and that was too narrow for them to force their shoulders through. 

Draco glanced at Potter as he came to a whooshing, whuffling stop, and the rest of the pack piled up behind him. Potter studied the hind with intelligent eyes, but didn’t seem overly concerned. Draco raised one brow. _Really? And how are you going to get out of this one?_

Then the hill above the hind which held the rock bay trembled, and Hyacinth came springing from above to fall on her back.

The hind, incredibly, managed to leap one final time, surging over Potter’s head and making a bid for freedom. Hyacinth’s attack didn’t crush her spine the way it was probably meant to. Instead, Hyacinth landed behind her and snapped twice at her heels instead. The hind screamed and stumbled. _Hamstrings severed_ , Draco thought, so caught up in what he was watching that he felt almost nothing. _I forgot, somehow, that wolves are pack hunters_.

Potter jumped before the hind had come fully down from her magnificent leap, and met her four feet above the ground, his body dwarfing hers. His jaw clenched on her throat, and he tore his head sideways. Blood drenched his black fur, and the ground, and the faces of Celia and Leila, coming eagerly up behind him.

But the image that remained in Draco’s mind then, and forever after, was that of two dark shapes, one slender, one bulky, the bulky one clasping the neck of the slender one as they hung motionless against the moon.


	3. Chapter 3

“Look in the mirror, Draco. The cure has progressed. Soon you will feel much better than you do now.”

Lucius’s hands were on his shoulders. Lucius’s breath was in his ear. Draco shuddered with an instinctive revulsion, wishing he could flee from his body as he did under the physical torture, but Lucius would surely notice it now, as he didn’t when he was preoccupied with his tools. His father’s noticing his distance from the process of “curing” him was a step closer to his father discovering the truth. 

Draco could not endure it if that happened, and to endure was harder than to live. 

He lifted his head and gazed into the mirror at the ruin of his body that Lucius considered “progress.”

He was so emaciated that Draco knew he would have fallen over if Lucius hadn’t supported him. His skin was translucent in places, clearly showing the maze of running blue veins and the marks of sores and weals and scars and burns that Lucius had inflicted on him. And bites, from the rats three days ago, though Draco forced himself to look at those more objectively. His vision had trembled at the edges when he focused on them for too long, which was a sure sign that his astral projection was preparing to happen in spite of all the control he could exercise over it.

His shoulder blades stuck out of his body like broken bats’ wings. His teeth were the most prominent part of his face. His ears lacked the lobes, his hair grew sparse, and his jaw trembled and hung loose constantly, no matter how often Draco tried to clamp it shut.

Draco gazed at himself as steadfastly as he could, privately glad that he could change his appearance to whatever he wanted when he was in astral form. Otherwise, though he might have got pity from people like Potter and his pack, it was very hard to imagine that they would ever take him seriously.

“So good,” Lucius whispered to him, and stroked down one of Draco’s legs, which was so thin that it looked like a chicken bone to Draco. There was a streak of dried blood on his knee. He looked at that instead of his father’s healthy hand touching his skin. Draco’s hands bore the swollen joints of repeatedly broken fingers. 

_And Lucius would have done worse if I defied him._

Lucius stood back upright, and caught Draco’s eye, and smiled. The thickness of Dark magic crackled in the air around him, smelling like rotted fruit mixed with rotten meat, and Draco closed his eyes in pain and exhaustion and dread.

“Not long now,” Lucius whispered, as if he were consoling a sulky child. “And then you’ll be healthy, and we’ll be free of this curse that plagues us.” 

He helped Draco limp back to his bedroom, murmuring tender words all the while, and then went to fetch the screws that he would drive into Draco’s spine. Draco shut his eyes and leaped free. 

One cold thought rode with him, like a heavy bolt of glass that was meant to rivet him to his body.

 _Even if I escaped, would my life be worth living?_

*

The forest glade was a relief after that, even if the only person Draco could see in it was Potter, and even if Potter’s eyes fixed on him the moment he arrived, giving Draco none of the pleasure of trying to sneak up on him.

And even if Potter half-rose to his feet with a startled exclamation.

“What’s happened to you?”

Draco changed his astral appearance at once. He must have brought along some of the wounds that Lucius had inflicted on him, or perhaps come naked. It was one of the reasons he hated looking into the mirror; it always influenced his perception of the appearance his “body” took the next time he escaped from his prison.

He was especially regretful for this time, since Potter was staring at him with wide and startled eyes. Draco’s only comfort was that it couldn’t have been as bad as it had looked in reality, or Potter would have laughed and said something about Draco deserving it. No, probably it was only nakedness, to shock him. 

Then Draco thought about the hunt he had seen the other night, and wondered whether it was really that easy to shock Potter any longer.

He shrugged off and buried the speculations, because Potter was waiting for him to speak, and he had no way of knowing if what Draco said was the truth or a lie. “Nightmares sometimes affect me that way,” Draco said. “And it’s easy to have nightmares when you’re in the house that the Dark Lord used as his headquarters.”

He wanted Potter to step back from Draco’s casual mention of nightmares, eyes bright with respect at the tone. Surely it should make Draco look powerful if he disregarded his own pain. But it seemed that becoming a werewolf hadn’t dimmed Potter’s sense of self-righteousness, because he stepped closer instead, nostrils wide as if he were focusing those keen bodily senses he had talked about on Draco. “How often do you have the nightmares?” His voice was low.

“Every night,” Draco said. For a moment, he wondered about telling Potter the truth, but what was Potter going to do? He’d said that he wasn’t leaving this forest until his pack had all learned control of their wolves, and it wouldn’t happen in the next few weeks, which Draco estimated was all the time he had until Lucius killed him. Nor could he tell anyone who would investigate and see the truth. Lucius would simply find some way to cover up and lie his way out of it. And then he would hurt Draco even more because of it. No, Draco was not so stupid as to believe in a rescue.

That truth sank home for the first time. If the sight of his body had been a glass bolt in his spine, this was a lead chain about his chest. Draco closed his eyes.

There was an odd tingle in his left shoulder. Draco looked up in surprise to see Potter withdrawing his hand with an embarrassed look.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I would comfort my people by touching them, but I forgot that I can’t do that with you.” He stepped back and circled around Draco as if trying to look for the most solid part of him, reminding Draco of nothing so much as a wolf circling a locked barn. “It’s no wonder that you use your magic to flee when you can. Is there—” He shook his head harshly. “No, of course there isn’t.”

“There isn’t what?” Draco asked. He kept a sharp eye on the anxious, condescending expression on Potter’s face. As long as it didn’t grow too strong, then he could put up with it. It was—slightly pleasant to have someone ask questions about him as if they would have liked to aid him.

“There isn’t anything I can do to help you,” Potter said harshly, and settled back on the ground with a fluid motion that Draco never would have believed if he hadn’t seen Potter move far more gracefully in the forest. “If I went back now, everyone would question me about where I’d been, and there would be people who could work out what happened, because my wolf is never far from the surface. I would need to persuade the Minister and the Wizengamot that you should be released from house arrest, and I’m not sure that my voice is politically relevant anymore.” He pawed a distressed hand across his forehead, his eyes turning yellow.

Draco bit his lip and stayed quiet. He _wanted_ to say something about how Potter could get around that if he’d ever bothered to learn how to properly wield his political influence, but why should he? Potter would talk some mealy-mouthed moral rubbish about how he couldn’t take advantage of his fame, and the situation would say exactly what it was now. Draco couldn’t be disappointed because he hadn’t expected anything less. Potter had no idea of the truth, and his first loyalty had always been to the people clustered around him—who had never included Draco.

Perhaps Potter could alert his friends, but even if he did, that would mean the Aurors would come clumsily sniffing about, and Lucius would punish Draco more in the end.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he said, because he could say that as an abstract statement and mean it. “I’d rather hear more about the pack and your part in it, to be honest. That’s what I’m here for, not discussing my own situation.”

Potter watched him with brooding eyes for a few more moments, and then nodded and climbed to his feet. His scar appeared briefly as his head shifted, and Draco started. Usually it was the first thing he stared at, to remind himself that this was Potter he was talking to and orient his mindset accordingly. This time, it hadn’t occurred to him to look for it. Potter’s aura of strength was a much better reason to stare.

“I understand,” Potter said. “And it’ll be interesting to tell this story to someone who isn’t already part of the pack and doesn’t understand it instinctively because of the presence of the wolf moving inside him.” He grinned. Draco decided his impression of the other day hadn’t been mistaken; Potter’s teeth _were_ longer and sharper than they had been when he was human. “When you didn’t return after the hunt, I decided that you’d grown disgusted with us.”

“No.” Draco drifted after Potter and seated himself on the ground, legs folded, when Potter settled down in a crouch outside one of the houses. For a moment, his arse passed through the grass, but he readjusted before Potter could do more than raise an amused eyebrow. Draco lifted his head with assured haughtiness and asked a question that he thought would distract Potter. “When did you become so bloody good at killing?”

“It _was_ bloody, wasn’t it?” Potter murmured, misunderstanding the question because he was Potter. He examined his hands for a moment, as if he expected to see silver nails there, before he lifted his gaze to Draco. “When I took the wolf into myself,” he answered. “When I decided that I couldn’t become absorbed, either by the change itself and the hunger it produces or by the fact that the wolf existed.” 

Draco folded his arms and nodded to show that he was listening.

“It’s hard to describe the wolf,” Potter said. “It’s not _exactly_ a separate animal, or being, inside me—although it comes close to that for someone like Hyacinth, who has so much strength to control. It’s more like—a need. A twitch in the muscles when they’re not exercised enough. A taste for the right kind of food that obsesses you more the longer it goes unfulfilled.” He smiled, and Draco saw the golden haze brighten and grow strong in his eyes again. “Yes,” Potter repeated softly. “A taste for the right kind of food. Exactly like that.”

Draco leaned forwards. “I’m surprised that you managed to come to that decision in the first place. I’ve always heard that werewolves are mindless _before_ the change, before the day of the full moon, and all the restraints in the world won’t keep the wolf back when it wants to come out.”

Potter snorted. “What causes the mindlessness is the werewolves’ attempt to ignore or flee from their fate. The wolf doesn’t like being ignored. It’ll surge up all the more destructively if one of us tries to pretend that they’re just a normal human. It’s like that taste I told you about. Ignore it and the food becomes all you can think about.”

 _One of us_ , Draco thought in wonder. _Potter has managed to become one of the monsters, and he seems comfortable being so._

“And sometimes, of course,” Potter continued in a soft, grim voice, “you get someone like Fenrir Greyback, who revels in causing damage and pain. He’ll invite the mindlessness in and run with it, until the wolf takes over most of the time. It’s why he looked like a wolf even when he was in human form—the yellow fingernails and the long teeth.” He shook his head and looked away.

“How was he able to bite you?” Draco asked, giving in to his curiosity, though his mother would surely have called it vulgar. “I would have thought the Ministry would keep you locked up like a virgin bride until all the Death Eaters were dealt with.”

Potter sighed. “He sent me a note saying that he was ready to surrender, but he would only surrender in my presence and on the night of the full moon. I could bring all the Aurors I liked and all the silver I liked and—and everything else. I went because I was a young, naïve idiot.”

Draco was startled into laughing. “It’s good to see you recognize that.”

Potter turned his head quickly, and Draco recoiled in spite of himself at the sight of those teeth champing together and the eyes focused on him—and maybe the sheer swiftness of the motion, too. Potter’s swaying head left afterimages in his vision. “I was,” he said. “What I am now is better than that, despite all the pain I’ve gone through. I know what I am and accept it, and I can protect other people from me and my pack members from dying because of their wolves. That’s worth it.”

Draco had to look away, because he wasn’t sure what Potter would see in his eyes if he kept returning his gaze. “And of course Fenrir managed to slaughter the Aurors that you’d brought along, and evade the weapons.”

“Of course,” Potter said dryly. “He acted as if he wanted to kill me, too, then ended up biting me. He was howling when he did it, but I’d swear he was laughing.” One hand rose to his right shoulder to touch the bite Draco had noticed before. “He ran away after that, and left me to explain myself.

“I concealed that I was bitten from everyone except Ron and Hermione, and told the Ministry that they needed to take Greyback seriously as a threat. They did. Meanwhile, I started studying how to control my wolf.”

Potter paused reflectively. “Except for my first change.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “You let yourself have one night of howling in misery and pacing up and down in a small room? I can’t imagine that that made your wolf very happy.” Of course, given Potter’s innate nobility, it was also impossible to imagine him doing anything else.

Potter smiled at him. His eyes were glinting, and his head tilted to the side, and Draco suddenly felt as if Potter were considering the angle he would need to get to Draco’s jugular. “No. I made sure that I knew where Greyback was—those senses I told you about are useful for tracking other werewolves, too—and then I warded the forest so that he couldn’t get out and neither could I. I made sure I was close to him when I changed.” His fingers rose in front of him, clenching, and once again he seemed to be testing the strength of invisible claws.

“I tore the bastard’s throat out.”

The sound of the growl in the back of his voice would have made Draco’s hair rise and his heart beat faster, if it could have. And it did something else. Draco felt himself close his eyes and tilt his head back in sheer reaction.

This was Potter the way Draco had sometimes daydreamed he could be, when he allowed himself to forget about Potter’s stupid fucking heroics and focus on the pranks he pulled on Slytherins instead. This was Potter acknowledging the full force of his strength and _using_ it. He was one of the monsters, but he hadn’t become like the Dark Lord or Greyback. Still, he tore people’s throats out.

Draco knew he would have gone hard if they were in the same room.

“And after that,” Potter went on, in a gentler voice, as if he knew that Draco needed time to absorb what he’d just heard, “I started to look out for other werewolves who were still struggling to cope with what they were instead of sinking hopelessly under their burden, or using it as an excuse to run mad. I found Celia, and Josh, and Leila, that way.”

Draco opened his eyes and tried to do something else other than to stare at Potter in avid lust. “I know who you’re leaving out, having met the pack,” he said with some difficulty. Potter shot him a curious look, which suggested he didn’t know how he’d affected Draco after all. Draco cleared his throat and hurried on. “How did you find Hyacinth?”

“I heard rumors about her,” Potter said, settling back in the grass so that now he was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, like a normal person, rather than on his buttocks, like a wolf. “That she’d been changed and her family was desperately trying to keep her from murdering anyone—and that they’d failed. When I found her, she was near to committing suicide out of despair. I did what I could to protect and help her. It wasn’t until I transformed and fought her and won that she started to think I could help her control her wolf, though.”

“I understand why,” Draco said. “She’s incredibly powerful.”

Potter nodded, with compassion and pity stirring together like water and mud in his eyes. “If she was a real wolf and born with that amount of strength, she could lead a pack, no question. If she was a human woman, she could be a politician. But werewolves aren’t natural creatures, and unless she learns to dance with it like a partner, then there’s nowhere for that strength to go.” He lifted his head, and Draco saw the same determination that had been in his eyes when he howled at the moon. “There’s no place for us. So we’re going to _create_ one.”

Draco wanted to shiver. He had never imagined that that would be the action he would miss being able to do the most when he was astral, but it seemed that Potter had made it so. “No one but you could do it, Potter.”

Potter gave him a quick smile, but shook his head. “No. Someone else could have come up with this strategy. I just happen to be the one who did.”

Draco nodded and said nothing else. If Potter wanted to persist in his little delusion, then Draco wasn’t going to contradict him. 

“Now.” Potter sprawled forwards and settled his elbows on the grass and his chin on his hands. “Why did you stay away for three days after the hunt if you weren’t disgusted with us? I thought the timing no coincidence.”

 _Because Lucius hurt me so badly that I spent most of those three days unconscious, and the rest with him watching me too closely_ , wasn’t an answer that Draco could give, given the careful web of lies he’d spun about himself by this point. He shrugged instead. “I got busy. I was slightly less bored. I was able to talk to my father, which isn’t always the case; he’s always scheming to get us out.” Draco was proud of how level his voice remained on those words. He could still lie well. He still had power of a sort.

_It’s the only power you’ll have soon. You should tell Potter the truth and let him do something to help you._

But Draco dismissed the idea. Potter had stated his limitations all too clearly. What could Draco expect him to do? And besides, he thought he should be able to choose how much he revealed and to whom. It would be rare enough that he got to make choices in the rest of his life. If he wanted to die with his mouth shut on the words that would expose him as weak and contemptible to Potter, then he should be able to do that.

“Acceptable,” Potter said, tilting his head to the side and watching Draco with wild eyes that wavered between gold and green. “And yet, I think, not quite the whole truth.”

Draco shrugged, glad that he couldn’t sweat in this form, and that any nervous fidgets he did on reflex were probably absorbed in the general flickering and flashing of his unstable limbs. “If I don’t want to retell every boring detail of my closed-in days, Potter, I personally think that you should find that reassuring.”

Potter, thankfully, laughed and sat upright again, this time with his legs sprawled around him in a pose that struck somewhere between wolf and human. _He tries to incorporate the balance even into his gestures_ , Draco thought. _I can see why the others would find it difficult to imitate him_. “You’re probably right about that,” he said. “Well, I hope you continue to visit. You’re the first non-werewolf I’ve told about this, other than my friends, who would trust me if I told them I needed them to follow me into a giant’s lair. And if you took it this well, then maybe the Wizengamot will, too. Someday.”

Draco winced. “Potter, I took it this well because I like power, and I don’t mind blood,” he said. “What you showed me in the hunt was beautiful. I don’t think many other people would see it the same way.”

Potter winked at him. “Ah, but you grew up with the tales of werewolves as monsters and you still managed to overcome your prejudices. I think that someone who’s lived outside the wizarding world, like a Muggleborn, might be more sympathetic.”

Draco snorted. “And there’s so many of those on the Wizengamot.”

“Well, then there might be pure-bloods like you who think we’re beautiful,” Potter said with determined optimism. When Draco rolled his eyes, he said at once, in a challenging tone that made Draco understand how a wolf could roll over and show its belly, “Well, what do you think is beautiful about us, then?”

“You’re wild,” Draco said. “And that’s something a human can admire, but it’s not the same thing as thinking you’re harmless. I know you can’t hurt me even if you try. If I were in front of you in the flesh, I’d no doubt feel differently.”

Potter sighed and ran his hand down his face. “Yes, perhaps you’re right. But I still think we should try, and use as many advantages of both wolf and human as we can to—”

“ _Get away from him_.”

Potter sprang up and away from Draco, landing on all fours and growling from deep in his chest. Draco vanished and then reappeared facing the one who had spoken from the woods.

It was Hyacinth, walking on her hands and knees, her eyes fixed on him and her nostrils so wide that Draco could see the red inside them. They were flaring and sniffing, and she seemed uncertain whether she saw or smelled him most keenly. She had a better growl than Potter did.

“I can smell him,” she said. “Blood, pain, death-stink. He comes from a place of torture and madness. He hasn’t told you everything, leader.” She turned her gaze towards Potter, and it grew briefly reverent, but the next moment she was looking back at Draco with no loss of suspicion.

“Malfoy?” Potter asked.

It was all there in his voice—the old hatred, the old uncertainty as to whether Draco was good or evil, the doubt that he should have shown him any attention because Draco wasn’t _worth_ such attention.

_He must think that I’m the one torturing people._

Draco leaped without answering. He had only a few weeks left to live. He wasn’t about to spend them with people who insisted on turning him into a person he hadn’t been—mentally or physically—in years.

_Your pride will choke you to death._

_Then at least I don’t have to swallow it_ , Draco answered the voice in the back of his mind, and swam away through the astral world.


	4. Chapter 4

Of course he went back to Potter’s glade.

He didn’t mean to. But staying in his body while his father tortured him was no choice at all, and he found observing Muggles, or even wizards, less interesting than it had been when he was sure no one could see him.

Someone could. That person waited in the distance, and probably forgot about him the longer he was absent. Draco pictured Potter involving himself in the affairs of his pack, and his friends if they ever visited, and deciding that Draco was only an aberration in his life, the same way Draco had been for him in Hogwarts. 

His pride, battered down by Lucius’s wires and bolts and pinching machines, decided, for some reason, that _that_ was the final insult. Before his death, Draco could at least say that he had managed to matter to Harry bloody Potter.

Even if he was the only one who ever knew, because all Potter had to do to conceal the fact was simply not mention to anyone else that he’d talked with Draco.

A memory of Hyacinth and the way she’d sniffed out blood and pain on him made Draco pause for a moment. But then he shrugged and flitted away from the arguing Muggle family he’d been watching in the direction of the pull that led to the forest. All he had to do was wait until Hyacinth left and then present himself to Potter. He was sure he could irritate him easily enough to make him forget what Hyacinth had said, or get him talking of himself, which Potter loved to do. Draco would luxuriate in the sensation of fooling someone else one more time.

*

“There you are.”

For a moment, Draco decided he’d made a mistake after all, even though he’d carefully waited until Potter split his pack and sent them in separate directions to “try to balance their wolf and human sides for an afternoon.” Somebody had to have stayed behind. Probably Hyacinth; so far, Draco had not heard Potter speak to anyone else in that careful, coaxing tone.

But when he flickered around the tree and definitively into Potter’s sight, he saw that Potter was watching _him_ with those brilliant wild eyes, and moving towards _him_ with a slow step that suggested he was trying to tame a skittish animal, and talking to _him_ in that tone.

Draco stood there, staring. He knew that Potter still couldn’t touch him or harm him; if he hadn’t managed to do it on the night of the full moon, when the werewolf magic was strongest, then he wouldn’t be able to when they were three weeks away from the next time he would transform. 

And there was something like sympathy in Potter’s look and movements, not the scorn Draco had expected, or the suspicion Potter would have that Draco was the one doing the torturing and murdering. Sympathy was like a rare wine at this point. 

So Draco let Potter get within five feet of the limits of his astral body, listening all the time to Potter’s flow of amazing, amusing words.

“I know something must be wrong—with you, or around you. I remember the way you looked when you first arrived last time. You were as thin as a werewolf who’s tried to starve himself to death, and you had wounds on your legs and arms that looked like the work of rats.” Potter licked his lips. “I discounted that when you changed because you clearly had the power to make yourself look like whatever you wanted. But the scent of blood and death Hyacinth told me about proves I shouldn’t have. What’s happening to you, Draco? Is it the Ministry? I gave them a request through Ron and Hermione for Aurors to investigate Malfoy Manor, but they said they’d been there and that everything was fine. So clearly, it’s not something it’ll do much good to contact them about. Either they’re causing it, or they’re ignoring it, or they’re not seeing it. Which is it? What’s happening to you?”

Draco sighed as the crackling aura of strength flowed over him. It was so thick that he could have gone to sleep on it like a pillow. It would be wonderful, he thought, to simply trust in Potter the way his wolves so apparently did and tell him what was happening. Of course Potter still couldn’t do anything, because he had given up his political power to hide away in the forest, but it would be soothing to pour out the words.

“Draco.” Potter’s tone had dipped, a choice that surprised Draco at first, because surely it would make his voice more like a threatening growl. But seemingly that was the right tone to work with the aura of strength, because Draco found his perceptions of Potter as a comforter increasing. “I can help you. I only need a few details. I only need a name. Who is the one doing this to you? You’re an innocent victim. I can help you. I only need a name.”

“Nice try, Potter.” With an effort, Draco pulled himself out of the daze he was falling into and retreated with a small shake of his head. Then he realized that he might as well stand in place, since Potter could hardly grab him and shake the answer out of him, and he raised an eyebrow and clasped his hands behind his back. “But what makes you think that I’d tell you the name now, when I didn’t before?”

Potter gave him a smile that would have been gentle, except Draco could see the edge of teeth in it. “So you do admit that something is happening to you.”

“Things happen to different people every day,” Draco said, mentally cursing himself for the slip. After a moment, thinking back over the different torments that Lucius had subjected him to in the past week, he decided that the slip was forgivable. He was still doing better than most people would have under this kind of pressure; he could cling to his pride. “For example, eating and sleeping and having pointless arguments with their friends. Dying. Being changed into werewolves. You know how it is.”

Potter’s eyes flared, and Draco flickered backwards despite himself, until he landed behind the tree where he’d stood while he was waiting for the rest of the pack to leave the clearing. He’d forgotten that, of course, no matter how much control Potter had over his wolf, he’d always had a temper, and his being a werewolf would aggravate it.

“Draco, I’m sorry.” It was sweet to hear an apology, and to hear someone who wasn’t Lucius calling him by his first name. Draco peered around the tree. Potter slunk towards the tree, his head lowered, his eyes on the ground. Draco stared. He hadn’t realized that Potter knew what humility _meant_. “I only want to know more about it. I don’t want you to put me off with lies when it’s perfectly obvious that you’re being hurt. Yes, I would have mocked you in school, but we’ve both changed since then.” Potter took a deep breath, as though he needed to think about his own words for a moment. “Come out and let me help you.”

Draco closed his eyes and stood still. A fine trembling was making his astral body flash and alter in front of his gaze, and he didn’t want it distracting him while he considered what he should do. 

Could this be the help that he had wanted and despaired of finding?

But then the memory of his last conversation with Potter returned to him, and he brutally trod out the hope as he answered, “You told me that you couldn’t help. Your political influence is limited, everyone would know you were a werewolf if you left the forest, and asking the Ministry didn’t work. Exactly what you do you propose to do?”

There was silence for so long that Draco thought Potter had given up and gone back to sit in the middle of the clearing and wait for his pack to return. It was better that way, Draco told the dizzy tide rushing through his mind. There was absolutely nothing that anyone could do for him. He knew that. He had to start remembering reality more often. 

Then Potter stepped around the tree and stood looking at him.

Draco’s breath caught in a gasp. Potter’s eyes were mostly golden now, and he had his teeth bared, and his black hair hung shaggy and unclipped to his shoulders, which Draco hadn’t noticed before, probably because Potter’s head was in such constant motion. He looked like a beautiful wild beast in the sunlight striping the tree trunks, and Draco was distantly glad that he’d seen a sight like this before he died.

“No one could give me justice after Greyback bit me,” Potter said, as if that was an answer to Draco’s question. “The Aurors said he was too dangerous to try arresting even on a night when it wasn’t the full moon. They sent out hunters for him, but they were too many and too heavily armed, and so of course Greyback always heard they were coming and ran away before they managed to corner him. He slaughtered a few Aurors for the fun of it, and left their corpses as warnings. Most of the Ministry didn’t know I was a werewolf, but I pleaded for justice for the people who died next to me that night, and still they couldn’t do it.” He exhaled, and a growl rode his breath.

“So I did the only thing I knew would satisfy me—and the wolf, which it _is_ important to pay attention to and please. Only you can’t indulge all its desires, because that makes you less human.” Potter began to pace back and forth, his head swaying restlessly. At the moment, Draco thought he looked less like a wolf than an angry bear.

“I don’t see how this has much relevance to my situation, Potter.” Draco was grateful that the words came out bored. There were many less complimentary—to himself—tones that they could have taken at the moment, and he no longer trusted his own reactions around Potter.

Potter gave him a single intense look probably intended to shut him up. Draco raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, because it seemed the simpler course. Potter gave a small growl and shook his head, as if he wanted to bite through something. Of course, he had nothing in his mouth.

“I’ll get you justice,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I have to go around the Ministry to do it. I’m already permanently outside the Ministry. They feel that they don’t dare trust any werewolf, no matter how much in control.” He stretched, and Draco found it easy to imagine fur cloaking him and claws at the ends of his fingers. “I’ll get you justice,” he repeated, and there was the sound of ripping flesh in the back of his throat.

“That will go against everything that you told me you were working for,” Draco said. His thoughts were wheeling in mindless circles again, and he was barely conscious of the words coming out of his throat, except that they were the arguments he would use against Potter if he truly intended to resist this offer of help. “You wanted to show the Ministry that you _could_ become a good little mingling of human and wolf, obedient to all the things they wanted you to do. And now you’re going to insist that you’re not like that after all? Now you’re going to give them proof that you’ve gone to the monster side?”

Potter took a step towards. Draco imagined for a moment that he could feel that hot breath puffing across his face, and then realized it was only the exhalation of Potter’s power. He flickered away nonetheless, and ended up standing on the roots of the tree.

“My pack is absolutely and utterly loyal to me,” Potter murmured. “So are my friends. And would you run to the Ministry to tell on the person who granted you your justice and your freedom?” He tilted his head, his gaze wise with a darkness that Draco thought more human than werewolf. “I didn’t think so,” he added when Draco remained silent.

Draco was caught in a shivering fit which might or might not show in his astral body; he didn’t know. The important of it was mostly internal.

He had basked in Potter’s power the other day, in the sense that Potter was finally becoming what he should have been—edged, sharp, _dangerous_ —and that he wielded the wolf as a weapon instead of the other way around. That had been enough to attract him irrevocably when he was sure his experience of that power would remain purely abstract. 

Now here was an offer to use that power on his behalf.

He knew that part of Potter’s desire to use it for him was because he was a victim. Potter didn’t have any fond memories of Draco from school, and Draco wasn’t a werewolf that he could shelter in his pack and make his subordinate, so it must simply be that he wanted someone to rescue.

With the possibility of real freedom opening up in front of him, though, Draco couldn’t bring himself to mind the role. His pride had given him nothing so far but a way to endure death. If Potter could give him life…

He willed his astral body to match the state of his physical body as it was at that moment. It wouldn’t hurt him, since he was unable to feel anything when he was spiritual.

Potter’s eyes widened and went on widening until Draco thought he could see straight through them into the wild soul that Potter carried within him. Then Potter whirled and sank his fingers into a tree.

They punched straight into the bark and stabbed at least halfway through, making the tree, a sturdy pine about forty feet high, wobble. It didn’t matter that Potter lacked claws in human form, Draco thought, watching greedily. He had done this. And he would probably do and dare worse to get Draco out.

Potter ripped his hand free. The tree listed and sagged. Potter circled and punched it from the other side, and it fell straight over, crackling and rustling other branches, creating a hollow boom that echoed through the forest. Draco felt a vague disappointment; surely the other members of the pack would hear that and come running back to find out what was wrong with their precious leader. But he had already taken the gamble and was committed now. 

He stepped forwards so that Potter would stop punching trees—as exciting as that was—and pay attention to him. 

Potter immediately stepped up to him and carefully extended his arms to encircle Draco’s body. Draco couldn’t feel it. That didn’t matter. The very fact of the gesture made him close his eyes in hope and need. And Potter’s strength flowed over him like a riptide, a riptide that had decided of its own free will not to hurt him. Oh, it would hurt other people in his defense, but never him.

“Who did this to you?” Potter asked, and this time it sounded as though he could barely voice the words. His primal urges taking over and strangling him, Draco supposed.

“My father,” Draco said. He had thought it would be hard to confess that truth, since, after all, Potter had even more reason to despise Draco’s parents than he did to despise Draco. It wasn’t. Instead, the moment the words began to spill out, Draco found that he couldn’t stop talking. “Dark magic contaminated him, and he started losing his mental balance. I think he probably always was a little mad, and the confinement to the Manor made it worse. He killed Mother, but he uses an illusion to pretend that she’s still alive when the Aurors visit. And he’s been torturing me because he thinks I’m somehow sick with Dark magic and the torture will cure me.”

Potter shifted and stepped away from him, his hands still extended in front of him and his eyes and teeth wickedly bright. “He’s taken your wand?” he asked.

Draco nodded. “And he keeps me naked most of the time, so that I wouldn’t survive long even if I did try to escape. I use the astral travel to avoid most of the pain. I’m sure that I would be dead or mad by now if I didn’t.”

Potter ducked his head as though to protect his throat. His eyes were hazy with thought. “Does anyone have a clue about this?”

Draco smiled, and he knew the smile was bitter, but he thought he had a right to make it that way. “The Aurors see what they want to see. Lucius is very good at disguising the fact that he killed Mother and he’s abusing me. They ask a few questions, laugh and nod when my father says something witty, and then leave. I’m sure they think that I’m just a sulky young man because I never say anything that Lucius doesn’t order me to say.”

Potter nodded. “And you’re sure that your father has no chance to recover?”

Draco laughed. “Of course not,” he said. “I think that he would have stopped short of using rats on me and impaling my knees with diamonds if there was any sanity left in him.”

Potter stepped close to him again. Draco caught his breath. Potter hadn’t grown taller—he was still only Draco’s height, or even an inch shorter—but that aura of strength lent him all the bulk he needed.

“Can you last a few more weeks?” Potter asked. “That’s all I’m asking for. No more than that. I should be able to find a way into the Manor and rescue you before then.”

“I don’t know if I can last,” Draco said. “I don’t know bad the damage is, or whether my father will hurt me so badly before then that I’ll die.” He found his astral body trembling and flickering again, which surprised him. He had thought he had accepted his impending death and no longer feared it. 

_With hope and the possibility of freedom, fear returns_ , he reminded himself. He ought to have remembered that from the war. The times when he was most afraid were the moments when he thought he might be able to escape the Dark Lord and someone would discover his plans.

Of course, for understandable reasons, he hadn’t thought much of the war in the past few months.

“How long has he been torturing you?” Potter asked. “Does he heal you afterwards?”

“I’ve rather lost track of time,” Draco said, with a glance that produced a ducked head and a murmured apology from Potter. “He heals me, but his healing spells are always less powerful than his Dark magic, and he can’t wait for long before he has to start torturing me again. He’ll go too far and kill me soon, or my body will simply give up from all the damage it’s taken.”

Potter growled under his breath, which Draco took for defiance of fate rather than disagreement, and began pacing back and forth in front of Draco, his head bowed. Then he looked up and said, “This is a time I could wish the werewolf magic wasn’t so effective. It sweeps through our bodies like fire when it touches us and burns out minor magical talents. I can’t talk to snakes any more, and Celia used to be a Metamorphmagus but lost it when she changed. If she could still disguise her face effectively, I’d send her to the Manor and let her spy out a way to get through the wards. At least I could be sure your father wouldn’t know who she was.”

Draco shuddered. “If my father even _suspects_ that someone is trying to rescue me, he’ll go more mad than he already is. I can’t comprehend the level of pain I would be in if that happens.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

Potter’s voice vibrated in his chest, and he had moved up so that his arms encircled Draco’s ghostly form again. Draco smiled at him, unable to express the gratitude that pounded in the middle of his chest like a drumbeat. 

“But you’re right,” Potter said. “It will take a lot of care to get around the wards, and I suspect that you can’t do anything about them from inside?” Draco shook his head regretfully, and Potter clucked, as though he suspected his question had caused Draco pain. “Very well. You’ll tell me about the weakest places in the wards. I’ll get Hermione to bring me a book on exploiting weak places like those. It’s Hermione, she’ll be ecstatic to bring me a book. Especially one that isn’t about werewolves.” His voice was wry. “Lucius would recognize me, Leila has a few old wounds that limit her motion, and I don’t trust Hyacinth’s control when she’s away from me. It’ll need to be Celia and Josh who spy out the Manor. Both of them were Muggleborn, so that increases the chance that your father won’t have any reason to have seen them before.”

“What are you going to do?” Draco breathed.

“Rescue you. I told you that.” Potter lowered his head and let his nostrils flare, as though taking a deep breath of whatever scent he could smell from Draco’s astral body comforted him. “You should never have had to suffer like this in the first place, but I can make sure that you don’t have to suffer like this _again_.”

“But how are you going to rescue me?” Draco wished he could hear what the plan was, so that he could have some hope to cling to as his father’s whip fell on his body and he recovered from the wounds during the bouts of healing magic.

“I won’t know that until I hear about the weak places in the wards.” Potter’s hands closed in on him, and then drew back again as Potter seemed to remember that he couldn’t actually touch Draco. “And…if worst comes to worst, there’s one particular thing that I _know_ would work, but it would involve a lot of risk to you as well as to us, since Lucius would have no doubt that we were breaking into the Manor.”

Draco shook his head. “Save that plan for the absolute last option.”

“We will. It’s time-dependent.” Potter gave a smile that Draco didn’t understand, and then it changed to an earnest look and he bent down and looked into Draco’s eyes from a short distance away. “I need you to do one thing other than tell me about the weak places in the wards, Draco.”

“I’ll try,” Draco whispered. It would be wonderful to have someone to help him against Lucius, and he almost believed that Potter would be that person, but the fear of acting against Lucius for himself was still stifling.

“Endure,” Potter whispered back. “Last until we can figure out a way. And whether we have to use the time-dependent plan, or whether we manage to discover something before then, I promise you, we _will_ come.”

Draco nodded. “I can do that. I can try.” He hesitated, then asked, “Are you sure your pack will cooperate with you to save me? Muggleborns wouldn’t have much reason to like Malfoys.”

“They do what I tell them to,” Potter said simply.

And it was the command in those words, the assurance of unquestioned power, that at last gave Draco faith as well as hope.


	5. Chapter 5

“Not long now, Draco.”

Lucius spoke the words warmly into his ear, while slathering a thick potion over Draco’s shoulders and arms that would make him feel as if he were being eaten alive in seven minutes. Draco began to shiver and couldn’t stop. Lucius sighed and said, “I know that you’re not cold. You must try to be courageous. The Dark magic is nearly purged from your body. You’ve been very good and very brave. All I ask is that you try to endure a little longer.”

 _That’s what I’m afraid I won’t be able to do_ , Draco thought.

When he could feel the sensations like a powerful throat closing in on him and crushing him flat to fit in a stomach, he snapped his spirit free of his body and went seeking Potter.

*

“Frankly, I don’t think it’ll work.” Celia swiped a hand through her hair, frowning. “From what Malfoy says, the wards are strong enough to keep out even changed werewolves. Why should we be able to find a way through them when we’re in human form?”

Draco winced, but tried to be satisfied with Potter’s quick reassuring glance. When he stood, all his pack’s eyes automatically followed his movements and Hyacinth lifted her head from the half-doze she’d been in. Draco settled back against a tree root and tried to look as casual as he could, even though Potter was the only one who could see or hear him when they were this far from the full moon.

“I’m not asking you to attack through the wards.” Potter paced in a circle, his eyes abstracted and his hands folded behind his back as though he were holding the leash of a dangerous animal in them. For all that Draco knew, he was. He only knew that Potter’s control over his wolf was great; he still didn’t understand the full extent of it. “I want to know about the weaknesses of the wards instead, and particularly those areas where it looks as though two or more of them are patched together to create a seamed cover.”

“I know what you mean,” Josh said, leaning forwards. “I’ve studied wards before. But if we probe at those seams—”

“You’ll alert Lucius Malfoy. I know.” Potter’s quick reassuring glance was for the werewolf this time. Draco scowled, not liking to admit how jealous that simple gesture had made him feel. “That’s why I don’t want you to probe at them, and leave in an instant if you feel that he might notice and challenge you. Simply _identify_ them. I want to know everything you can tell me about the points on the house where they’re located, from a physical description of the stone and metal they’re covering to their direction relative to the sun and moon.”

Celia and Josh exchanged confused glances. Draco tried to look wise, then remembered that no one could see him anyway and he might as well be as hopelessly lost as the rest.

He had figured out, once he had some time away from Potter and the overwhelming rush of hope and fear and faith, that the time-dependent plan must be to attack as werewolves when the next full moon came about. But that was a problem, because the Manor had wards against werewolves, as did any ancient wizarding house. Those wards would be at the height of their strength when the full moon shone.

Potter had smiled when Draco told him that, but he hadn’t mentioned why. When Draco pressed him for details, Potter said, “If you act too hopeful, your father might figure out something is wrong.” He’d bent down towards Draco, his eyes so bright and so deep that it was difficult to look at him. “Do you think you would be able to keep the secret of what we’re going to do hidden from his Legilimency? Be honest, now.”

Draco had admitted that he wasn’t sure, and Potter had reached out and brushed his hand through Draco’s shoulder in that way that tended to leave a trail of tingles behind. “Then I’m going to ask you to trust me for right now, and respect that, eventually, we’ll rescue you.”

“He wants us to trust him,” Hyacinth said in her deep voice, her eyes turning wolf-yellow in the sunlight. She put her head back down on her hands, which she treated rather like forepaws at times, and blinked around at Celia, Josh, and Leila. “To trust him absolutely, in the way that we keep promising we do and in the way that Malfoy has to, and to do what he asks without demanding every single detail.”

“I think we could have figured that out on our own, Hyacinth,” Celia said in a brittle voice that made Hyacinth’s eyes deepen a shade or two. Draco heard a light snarl working its way up her throat, and doubted Celia would have said any of that if she’d been closer to Potter’s second-in-command. “But I at least want to know the _reason_ that Harry is so intent on hiding this from us.”

“Very well.”

Potter tossed his head back and let his strength go flooding over the clearing. Draco was glad, once again, that no one could see or hear his response, which included a needy whimper. The rest of the pack stood up or crowded closer, eager whines breaking from their lips. Potter held them like that for a series of endless moments that made Draco think he’d lose his breath from panting, and then released his strength.

The rest of the pack looked faintly embarrassed, except for Hyacinth. She gave Potter a nod and a smile that made Draco think she’d wag her tail if she possessed one in this form.

“So far,” Potter said, looking from one to the other of them with a gaze that made them lower their heads, “Hyacinth and I are the only ones who can do that reliably. I felt you trying to do it on the last hunt, Leila, but you got distracted and it faltered.” Leila gave him a hesitant smile. “That sharing of strength links us as a pack. We’re more likely to act in concert when we can respond to each other’s power. But because the rest of you tend to follow at my heels instead of carrying your strength around you constantly in a fanned-out umbrella, then I’m the one who has to do the most thinking and acting. And you imitate me instead of being able to act independently.” 

Celia started to protest. “Hyacinth was able to run ahead during the hunt and break the doe’s back—”

“And she was the only one.” Potter looked at her until she sighed and nodded. “I want _all_ of you able to do that, to carry out your own decisions in wolf form and let us know, through the medium of that connected strength, what you’re doing and which direction you’re moving. It’s _vitally_ important that you learn how to do that before we can rescue Draco. And I don’t want to tell you more than that because it’ll lead into discordance between your wolves—which want to do what _I_ command—and your human selves—which are used to comparing a leader’s decisions with your own inclinations. For the moment, you have to work with your power and extend it to each other as well as to me. And trust me.”

“Behave like wolves with the intelligence of humans,” Leila muttered.

“Isn’t that what we are, after all?” Potter tossed her a smile.

 _No_ , Draco could have said. There was also the side of the wolf that was mindless hunger and didn’t act like a pack beast. But simply by choosing to be here and following Potter, Draco suspected that most of them had grown past that stage and didn’t need to be reminded that it existed.

 _Most of them, maybe_. He glanced sideways at Hyacinth.

That was another reason Potter refused to explain his plan, he reckoned. The belief that a werewolf could balance control of the human and control of the wolf wasn’t a common one, and was the reason that so many of them became weaklings or monsters, from Potter’s point-of-view. He was trying to maintain an even more delicate balance at the moment, forcing his pack to put their beliefs into practice. Over-explaining it would ruin that element of belief that was crucial to achieving the sharing of power. Potter needed to make it sound simple, not complicated, although it was an aspect of the complicated things that he asked his pack to do every day.

 _And I think that I understand it, even though it hurts my head_. Draco ran a hand through his hair, wishing absently that he could feel things. It would make it easier to feel like he was accomplishing something when he was angry or upset.

It seemed that Potter had noticed his distressed expression. He said quietly, “Celia, Josh, step into the woods and practice walking silently. It’ll be best if you go near the wards around Malfoy Manor with as little magic as possible. Leila, if you would read this?” He held out a heavy book that Draco hadn’t seen the last time he was here. “Hermione gave it to me, and I can’t understand half the moves it suggests for finding the seams in wards and exploiting them.”

Leila accepted and opened the book. “Where would you be without my vocabulary?” she teased.

“A place that I don’t like to think about,” Potter said, turning her joking statement into a serious one, and giving her a dazzling smile that caused Draco to glance away. It didn’t matter that Potter was doing all this to rescue Draco; he knew that Potter still cared more strongly about his pack. Draco wasn’t a werewolf, after all.

Leila, not smiling now, nodded back to Potter, a formal bob of her head that looked like a bow, and began to read.

Potter turned to Hyacinth.

“You’ll need to go into the most isolated part of the forest for this,” he told her. “If you spread your power too near the edges of the woods, you know that other wizards will feel it. And we don’t want to make the Muggles uneasy and inspire someone to come investigate rumors of large dogs running wild. Concentrate as hard as you can. Remember that you need to be able to prevent it from soaring out like a net to touch _everything_ in sight.” He stroked the back of Hyacinth’s neck. “My power is greater than yours, but your range is wider, and you need to gain that fine edge of control.”

Hyacinth nodded with a slow blink of her eyes, as if she were absorbing Potter’s words on a deeper level than mere speech. In a moment, she had risen to her feet and padded away into the woods—more silently than Celia and Josh could yet move, Draco noticed.

Potter looked straight at him and beckoned.

“You want me to follow the big bad wolf into the forest?” Draco asked lightly, but he floated to his feet with a sense of relief. He still wasn’t completely comfortable with the pack. They were rescuing him only because Potter demanded it, he knew. At least he had the sense that Potter was more interested in him as a person.

 _Or victim_ , he reminded himself, but still his hope was fresher and brighter as he followed Potter around the trunks of oaks and pines until they could no longer see Leila reading the book.

Potter sat down on a stump, and Draco drifted down onto the grass in front of him. Potter held his eyes for long moments, and said, “You’ve told us about all the weak places that you know of in the wards?”

“Yes,” Draco said. “And I have to tell you, my father knows about the weakness of seams and how to counteract them, and he has wards that specifically fight werewolves.”

“I know that,” Potter said. “I don’t distrust you. I simply wanted to make sure that nothing else had occurred to you since we last spoke.” He slid to the foot of the stump, propping one elbow on it and putting his hand beneath his chin as he stared at Draco.

Draco cleared his throat uneasily. It made sense that Potter would share serious moments with his pack, since he had known them for so long and had all sorts of history with them that Draco didn’t know about. But his trying to have moments like that with Draco pleased and frightened and irritated him.

Of course, after so long with Lucius, Draco sometimes wondered if there was anything he didn’t fear anymore.

“Potter, why do you care so much?” he had to ask. “Would you care this much if one of your friends, or someone you were indifferent to in school, came to you and asked for help?”

“If it were one of my friends, I would feel guilt, because I should have been aware of it and noticed the changes in their behavior,” Potter said quietly. He was staring Draco in the eye again. “If it was someone I had been indifferent to, I would care once I figured out what was wrong, but not so much.”

“Then why with me?” Draco tried to look haughty. “Is it because you enjoyed seeing me struggle against my pride before I finally decided to accept your help?”

“How could that be, when I didn’t know you were fighting a struggle or that you hadn’t already told the truth to someone else?” Potter tipped his head forwards so that his hair fell across his eyes. Draco was at once relieved and a bit disappointed. “No. I care more because—because before I knew something was wrong, you watched us hunt, and you were fascinated. And you’re fascinated now, I can see it. You notice every time I do something that has a hint of the wolf to it. You _respond_. I can’t help but enjoy someone who enjoys my pack.” Potter looked up, his face wistful. “My friends have been wonderful, but they just don’t look at it the same way you do. Hermione pities me and wants to work on a cure. Ron believes in me but only because I was already his friend, not because he really thinks that a werewolf can change. A few people they’ve hinted the truth to are horrified. I’ve accepted reality, because the wolf is so powerful in you that it’s like learning to live with a new limb—or the loss of one. Everyone else still sees the wolf as something extra attached to me that they’d like to pull off.”

He leaned forwards and reached out to put a hand on Draco’s knee before he remembered. “Except you.”

Draco let his eyelashes veil his eyes. He had to remind himself that, unlike everyone else he had watched in his astral form, there was a chance—there must be a chance—that he and Potter would meet in the flesh someday. When that happened, Draco didn’t want him to be disappointed. 

“One of the reasons I like watching you so much is that I’m attracted to power,” he confessed. “It’s not—it’s not pure and detached in the way that you’re making it sound, Potter. I want power, too. It’s one of the reasons that I waited so long before I talked to you about my situation. I wanted the power of keeping the secret and fooling you with lies.”

“I don’t care,” Potter said. “Other people with better motivations than yours still can’t bring themselves to respond the way you did. I think—I think I care more about the consequences in this case than the reason behind those actions.” He eased closer, his stare direct into Draco’s eyes again.

Draco looked away and said lightly, “I’m not a wolf. You don’t have to try and prove to me that you’re dominant.”

“I don’t want to.” Potter left it at that, and Draco had to wonder if he meant that he wasn’t trying to prove he was dominant or that he was doing it even though he didn’t want to.

 _I think Potter has better control of his wolf than that_ , Draco decided, because anything else would be too frightening, and asked, “What do you think will happen when you rescue me?”

“We’ll give you what you want, of course.” Potter eased back on his heels, and when Draco looked at him again, he was gazing out into the forest, his arms folded so that his hands hung down on his knees. “We’ll take you to the Ministry if you want, or St. Mungo’s if you think that would be better. Or we can take you to a friend’s house if you have anyone who would shelter you.”

“St. Mungo’s would probably be best,” Draco admitted, though he winced at the thought of what the Healers would say when they saw his wounds. He didn’t think some of the things Lucius had done to him could ever be healed. But at least he would be free, with the chance to find magic that might help him. “I won’t be walking out of the Manor.”

Potter looked back at him with a softened face. “Of course not.”

They sat in silence for some time after that, when Potter had asked again if Draco remembered any additional facts about the wards and Draco had admitted that he couldn’t think of anything. Potter folded his arms behind his head and basked in the sunlight with his face pointed directly at it and his eyes closed. Draco watched him, and took in the strength that crackled around him as best he could, an antidote to the horror that waited for him in the back of his mind and the memory of his muscles.

 _If he cares about me inappropriately, I also care about him inappropriately_. Draco knew he would be quite content to remain by Potter’s side and watch him act the beautiful, dangerous wild animal for years. 

And he had no idea why.

*

“The cure is almost complete, Draco.”

Draco looked down at the shreds of his left leg and wondered if he should try to learn something from Lucius, something that might help Potter when his pack came to raid the Manor. Unfortunately, Lucius’s madness almost never wandered in directions that would be comprehensible to anyone else, and Draco could hardly think through the pain that enveloped him in a shroud.

He did manage to pluck up the courage and the words to say, “Why do you think you’re so close to the antidote to the Dark magic, sir?”

Lucius smiled and stroked his hair. Draco had to look away. He would see the father who had held him when he was born and praised his first efforts at magic if he kept gazing at Lucius now.

“I have at last removed most of your tainted magical core, and replaced it with the stronger, purer magic that will save your life,” Lucius explained. His hand never stopped petting Draco, moving from his hair to his face. His fingers dipped into the hole in Draco’s cheekbone, and Draco shut his eyes and tried not to cry out. He had to remain in his body long enough to listen to this, pain or no pain. It was the closest Lucius had ever come to stating his goals outright. “There are a few patches of dark, stubborn power that I cannot yet eliminate without killing you.” Lucius’s fingers curved downwards and jerked, and Draco heard the sound of the hole ripping wider. “But do not worry,” Lucius finished, seeming not to understand that his fingers had expressed his anger and that Draco was more than worried. “Those patches should be done away with in a few weeks’ time. There is one particularly powerful spell that I can only perform on the night of the full moon, and we must wait for that.”

Draco let his spirit leap free from his body as Lucius dragged him towards the spiked bed set up in the corner of the room. He had discovered information that would prove helpful to Potter and the rest of his pack. He clung to that triumph and endeavored to forget about the agony that was coiling through his physical being, far behind and below him.

*

“That is wonderful news.”

Draco stared, not understanding. He had expected his warning about the night of the full moon to anger or worry Potter, who surely didn’t need any more complications added to what sounded like a very complex plan already. But instead Potter was prowling back and forth in front of him with his eyes brilliant with enthusiasm. He spun around to face Draco, and he spun on his heels in a movement that no human had ever performed so gracefully—though Draco had to admit that he couldn’t imagine a wolf performing it, either.

“Don’t you see?” Potter asked. “If Lucius is involved with a powerful spell that night, he will have less attention to spare for us.”

“I don’t know,” Draco said. “When the attack begins, he could drop the spell and focus on you, and he’ll be all the angrier for being interrupted. Or he might kill me.”

He had to turn his face from Potter, because he knew emotions that he didn’t want to show would be flickering across his expression. He was no longer able to regard his own death with indifference, which was the thing that he hated most about having hope.

“He might,” Potter said. “Or the spell might go wrong when he gets distracted and do something unexpected and horrible to you.”

Draco stared at him in shock. Potter didn’t sound at all concerned, and Draco didn’t understand that. “You—I thought you cared about what happened to me,” he said, his voice coming out with difficulty. “If only because I respond better to you than so many other people would.”

In a moment, Potter abandoned his pacing and knelt down in front of Draco with terrifying swiftness. His eyes were bright and tender, and he swiped at Draco’s cheek with one hand. Draco recoiled before remembering that this form didn’t show the hole in his face, and that Potter couldn’t hurt him even if it did.

“I’m sorry,” Potter whispered. “Part of the problem is knowing how much I should explain to you and how much I shouldn’t. And I don’t want to favor you over my own pack, while being conscious of the impulse to do so.” Draco narrowed his eyes, wanting to discuss how _that_ had come about, but Potter was babbling on. “I think our best chance lies in Lucius’s madness. No matter what he does that night, I don’t think he’ll respond rationally, while my pack should be able to respond _more_ than rationally if we all learn to extend our strength to one another.” He paused reflectively.

“And I would do anything to avoid seeing you hurt,” he said. “Anything.”

Draco bowed his head. The forest was whirling around him. Potter’s green-golden eyes, his intense stares, the lowered tone of his voice…Draco had once imagined the last two things in a distinctly different context, with a distinctly different face.

 _It would be typical of my life that the closest I’ll ever get to the protective and possessive lover I’ve dreamed of is Harry Potter_ , he thought dazedly.

“Draco?” Potter’s voice was tender again, but a bit louder.

Draco swallowed and opened his eyes. “I’m fine,” he said. “What have you discovered about the wards?”

Potter paused and then began to explain, but all the while, he sat far too close and kept reaching out his hand so that his fingers brushed through Draco’s astral form, causing infuriating tingles.

Draco, who knew that this didn’t have a chance of lasting, reckoned that he would just have to endure that, too.


	6. Chapter 6

When he could stand to be in his body, Draco listened to Lucius’s rambling. His father frequently talked about the full moon—though the details of the spell were frustratingly vague; Lucius seemed more interested in the technical details of _phases_ , of all things—and cures for Dark magic and how Draco would walk at his side and smile up at him when he was completely cured.

 _And maybe that would happen, if I finally go mad and if Potter doesn’t come for me and if I could ever walk again_ , Draco thought.

He had had one glimpse of his legs as his father maneuvered him from one iron frame to another. One was enough. His bones were tiny fragments scattered through thin strips of flesh and blood. Draco knew that he couldn’t walk on them. He could barely _crawl_ , mostly through dragging himself forwards on his arms, when Lucius put him down in a bed and went to brew healing potions.

Lucius didn’t seem to care. He put his hands more frequently on Draco’s face now, and seemed to stare at him with more and more affection.

“You won’t be like Narcissa,” he whispered. “I had to kill her to purge her. How I mourned her, my lovely wife, but it _had_ to be done. I won’t bear a taint on our family.” His hand was fever-hot when he slid it into Draco’s hair, or maybe that was Draco’s skin. If he didn’t have a fever by now, he would be surprised. “But you’ll be free.”

 _Yes_ , Draco said in the back of his mind, _I will be_.

For now, he could only bow his head and endure.

*

Meanwhile, the pack practiced their magic.

Either Celia or Josh was absent all the time now; one of them was always spying on the Manor, Draco understood. He found himself more tense than usual, but so far, there was no indication that Lucius had noticed them, which was nothing short of incredible. He relaxed the most when he happened to be in the glade as one of them came back from their latest mission and reported on the weaknesses in the wards to Potter.

The three still there practiced constantly. Potter would sit in the center or the side, depending on how much attention he thought they needed from him and where Draco preferred to sit. He would give instructions that made little sense to Draco in a low voice that was soothing just to listen to, like water trickling through a distant river. Leila, and Hyacinth, and Josh or Celia, would nod, and then try to swing their power out over their heads in certain patterns, or try to touch only one member of the pack and not others, or try to let Draco feel it.

They were beautiful to watch. Draco would catch his breath as their power flooded over him, thick and prickling, like being rubbed in pine needles. He would watch as their eyes widened and their bodies trembled with two auras overlapped each other. He saw Leila blink back tears and Hyacinth speak as calmly as Potter himself to assure a trembling Celia, who had accidentally jabbed Hyacinth with her magic, that she wasn’t angry. He saw them flowing through the sunlight with strength and grace that couldn’t belong to humans.

Potter was more beautiful than any of them.

Even when he sat still and let the rest of his pack take center stage, Draco found his eyes going back to Potter again and again. The scar and the green eyes and the way he lounged on his side or his haunches didn’t hurt, but none of those was the main reason. Draco would have been attracted to a beautiful person, but he wouldn’t have considered surrendering to them, the way he did with Potter.

 _That’s ridiculous_ , he told himself, when the urge became overwhelming enough that he nearly prostrated his astral body before Potter. _You’re not even a werewolf_.

But the impulse remained. Potter didn’t have to show his strength. His control was perfect. On the rare occasions when one of his people turned towards Draco and flashed resentful teeth, a snap or a growl settled them. As the weeks turned towards the full moon and restlessness tormented the pack, Potter simply increased his intent stares and the way he could walk stiff-legged across the glade, ready for a fight. The pack would subside into placidity. 

So far as Draco could tell, that placidity was never resentful. Leila, in particular, seemed relieved that Potter could give her some relief from the pressure of her wolf.

And again, that was all very well. But that made sense for a werewolf pack, and Draco continued not to be a werewolf. 

A steadily decaying body locked in his father’s Manor, yes, but not a werewolf.

Finally he settled on the only thing that might give him the clue to the mystery. Potter knew a lot about the magic of his kind. Perhaps he had deliberately set out to enchant Draco, though why he should wish to do that when Draco was already eager to be rescued…

 _That’s why you’ll ask him_ , Draco told himself sternly, and waited for his opportunity.

*

Potter had sent his pack into the forest today, with instructions to spread out, then to extend their power and see how long it took them to find each other. He had said nothing about Draco going with them, so Draco chose to stay. 

Potter lay in the sunlight, turned unselfconsciously on his side with his face sheltered under one arm. Draco swallowed as he drifted down to the grass next to him. A sharp ache filled him. He couldn’t feel the grass or the warmth of the air or the small white flower that he reached out and brushed a hand over, but he could feel that.

“Potter,” he whispered.

Potter rolled his arm off his face as slowly as dripping honey. His eyes opened likewise slowly, revealing a thin ring of gold around the green. It was less than a week to the full moon, Draco reminded himself. He had no excuse for staring with delight and wonder, as if Potter’s showing his eyes like that was some sort of conjuring trick.

“I do wish, Draco,” Potter said in a voice that was deep and seemed to dive under Draco’s tamely floating body, “that you would call me by my first name, the way that you call the rest of us.”

“I don’t know their last names,” Draco said, and stopped. What an idiot he sounded like. There was no reason for him not to ask the last names of the rest of the pack, if that was so important to him. It would be far simpler to do was Potter requested and call him by his first name.

Except that that would open a door he couldn’t shut.

Except he had no idea _why_.

He shivered and licked his lips. Then he said, simply because he wanted to hear what it sounded like and not because he wanted to obey, “Harry.”

A new and softened smile crept over Potter’s lips then. He raised himself on his arms and knees and gave a lazy shake that made him resemble a dog shaking off water. Draco told himself so, in a half-panicked attempt to stave off whatever was creeping towards them.

Harry gave him an amused glance and moved towards him on all fours, as naturally as he would on two legs.

“I don’t understand this,” Draco whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening.” He shivered, he was sure, so that his edges blurred, but he didn’t move away.

“I told you,” Harry said, as if he were answering the question Draco had asked, “that werewolf magic is a magic of the body.” He shut his eyes and took a long sniff, as if he could draw all the scent that Draco shed into his nostrils and use it to refresh himself. When he opened his eyes again, the ring of gold had expanded. “It alters our senses, increases our strength, and burns out minor magical talents in favor of its own existence. And it alters our constitution.”

Draco managed to clear his throat with an effort. He would not allow himself to be so disconcerted simply because Harry chose to look at him with those shining eyes. “That’s the same thing as saying it increases your strength.”

“No.” Harry came closer to him still, his fingers scraping softly in the grass. He was near enough now that Draco should have backed away to maintain a polite distance, but he sat still. “It increases our _health_. We heal faster. We immediately lose any disease we had when we become werewolves, and it takes a lot to make us sick after that. Leila thinks it’s a protection against eating meat from animals who might be unhealthy.” Harry rolled his shoulders, as if to say that he didn’t know enough to disagree. “And, combined with our senses, it lets us notice things about ourselves that we didn’t know before. Leila thought the injury she received a long time ago had mostly left her unaffected, but now she knows it impaired her movement. Celia tells me that she thought she was sincerely ignoring some taunts from a woman who didn’t like her. Now she knows she hates the woman and has fantasies of revenge about her.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” Draco said.

“Of course you don’t,” Harry said, but the rumble of his disgust was almost affectionate. He sat back on his haunches again and cocked his head. Since it didn’t actually put that much distance between them, Draco remained on his guard. “Being a werewolf makes it harder to lie to yourself, at least if you strive to keep your human side,” Harry continued in a soft voice. “I know, now, that I would like to continue associating with you after we rescue you from Lucius, at least if you want to.”

“And what I’m feeling—” Draco made a gesture between them, trying to indicate the almost solid attraction that tied him to Potter like an iron chain.

“My interest, pressing on you.” Harry shrugged without lifting his hands from the earth. “Sorry about that.”

Draco swallowed. “That explanation doesn’t work, though. I felt drawn to your power even before you realized I’d found you.”

“Did you, now?” 

And Harry leaned forwards, and Draco leaned to meet him at the same time even though their faces couldn’t touch, and he knew he was lost.

They didn’t kiss, of course. Instead, Harry turned his head sideways and rubbed it up and down through the image of Draco’s face, causing another flow of tickling tingles over Draco’s imagined skin. He should have looked ridiculous, he probably did, but his expression was grave and intent. Draco saw his fingers flicker and blend into each other as he reached up and laid a hand along the side of Harry’s cheek.

Harry held his gaze. He didn’t blink—maybe his eyes didn’t get dry as easily now that he’d become a werewolf—and Draco didn’t have to. So the interchange of their glances went on and on, and finally Harry ducked his head and reached out to hover his hand just above Draco’s knee.

“Well, now,” he said, the depth of his voice not enough to hide the happiness. “Well, now.”

Draco reached out to him in turn, and they sat, intangible hand clasped in intangible hand, until Harry heard the sounds of the pack returning.

*

Draco lived for the moments he could snatch alone with Harry in the forest. Watching the pack wasn’t enough anymore, and neither was rejoicing in the beauty of a place outside the Manor’s walls. He wanted to spend time with Harry, listen to his voice, and imagine a variety of impossible scenarios that he knew could never come true.

Harry had taught him to hope, and have faith. Now he taught Draco to dream.

He lay in the sunlight and whispered about the time when Draco would feel it, too, before breaking off into a description so that Draco could imagine it falling on his skin now, the way it hadn’t done in months. “You remember the way it presses on your skin like a hand when it’s strong enough? And when you shut your eyes and turn your face towards the sun, you feel as though someone was stroking your cheek? And the warmth increases until you want to get away from it, but at the same time, you don’t want to, because it’s delicious, like lying awake in bed on a sunny morning, and you want it to continue forever…”

He picked up leaves and fanned them out for Draco so that he could count the veins and see the delicate fuzzy edges. It was the next best thing to touching them. 

And he sat, leaning against a boulder, and fanned his power out so that Draco could bathe in it, like being surrounded by a thick and fuzzy wolf-pelt.

Draco still didn’t entirely understand why this was happening to him, but he was at peace with the fact that it was. Whether it was a combination of the way he smelled and his own unique attraction to power, or just the fact that Harry could see and hear him and make him feel less alone, or because Harry had asked for the truth about Draco’s injuries and then not laughed, Draco didn’t care. He suspected it was a combination of all those things, but he didn’t need to prove it. He gave himself blissfully up to watching Harry, to listening to him, and to wishing he could touch his skin, stroke his hair, kiss him.

When he finally voiced that wish aloud, Harry gazed at him for a long moment with wild eyes and said nothing. But the next day, he beckoned Draco away into the forest immediately, hardly even bothering to make his usual excuses to the pack. Once again, he sat on his haunches facing Draco, his eyes so close that Draco shivered with excitement.

“I’m going to try something,” Harry whispered. “It’s theoretically possible. I never thought of trying it, but I’m the strongest werewolf in the pack. If anyone here can do it, I should be able to.”

He stretched his hands out in front of him and closed his eyes. Draco watched half-uneasily, wondering what could take so much effort out of Harry, and if it was a good idea to encourage him to do it. Hyacinth would kill him if Draco did something to harm Harry. He was sure she could probably burst through the wards on her own and tear the rest of his body apart if she was angry enough.

Harry’s aura of power returned, hovering around his hands, concentrating on his fingers until Draco thought he could see them grow fuzzy, like his own. Harry rubbed his palms together, and the forest of charged air around his fingers became visible. It was as black as the fur of his wolf.

Harry opened his eyes, his body shaking with the effort, and reached out to place a hand on Draco’s arm.

This time, Draco felt it, and _not_ as a series of tingles.

He shuddered, and cried out before he could stop himself. Harry’s hand burned with fever heat, fire heat. Draco could feel all the lines on his palm, and the roughness on the edge of one nail where he’d gnawed it. Looking down revealed a blaze to the skin that he had to shield his eyes from.

But he didn’t need to see right now. He could see anytime. The miracle, which paralyzed him, was that he could feel Harry.

Harry leaned forwards, bowing his head, and Draco reached up and touched his hair. The power had gathered there, too, but Harry’s head was _ordinarily_ so frizzy that he hadn’t noticed it. Curls rasped against his fingers. Draco shuddered. He had a feeling that his face had changed to reflect his tears.

Harry said nothing about it. He lifted his head and pressed his lips against Draco’s.

Draco could not remember the last time someone had kissed him. He shut his eyes again and concentrated on the slow slide of Harry’s lips, the shy tap of a tongue, the feeling of dry and chapped skin.

“Oh, God,” he whispered.

Harry leaned away from him, and the aura of power dropped away, melting back into his skin. Draco knew that he would feel nothing if he reached for him now. He hooked his arms around his knees so that he wouldn’t be tempted to try it and shut his eyes.

“I was right,” Harry said, so drained that even his voice sounded less triumphant than it should have. “Werewolf magic is a magic of the body, right? If I’m strong enough, I ought to be able to give you a taste of the body.” His voice turned wry. “I wouldn’t want to try the mind or the soul, but the body I can do.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it last longer.”

“That’s the first time someone’s touched me kindly in months,” Draco whispered. He refused to open his eyes. “Don’t you dare apologize for not being able to give me more than a miracle.”

Harry said nothing for long moments. When Draco looked again, fearing that he might have unwittingly offended him, he saw Harry gazing at him with a look as bright and fresh as spring.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

*

And so the time wore on until the full moon.

Draco still couldn’t find out any details of the spell. He fretted to Harry about it, and Harry told him not to worry about it. He had just made his arms real and held Draco in them for a full five minutes, so Draco felt more inclined to trust him than he otherwise would have.

“I don’t like it, though,” Harry admitted, as he sat up and brushed leaves out of his hair. Draco had discovered a tendency in himself to watch the simple motions of Harry’s hands with lust and admiration, and he had to stare at the ground to prevent an embarrassing expression from overcoming his face. “I do wish we had more details. I think our plan is going to work no matter what, but if we knew in what direction Lucius’s insanity is likely to explode…”

“Would that matter?” Draco had to ask, long and bitter experience of his father’s madness driving him. “He would be utterly unpredictable when the spell was disrupted even if you knew what he was originally planning to do.”

“Yes,” Harry said simply, lifting his head, “but it might be easier to protect you. And that’s really all I care about.”

Draco stared at him. His eyes were glowing in the sunshine, and once again he had the look of a wild animal, though this time it was more as if he were one lying down outside a place where he had to wait while a companion walked into danger. Maybe a member of his pack, Draco thought dazedly. He could at least _hope_ that Harry would think about a member of his pack that way.

“Why?” Draco whispered. “You know this is mad and it won’t last once you rescue me.”

“I don’t think we can be sure of that,” Harry said calmly. “We don’t know what your condition will be.”

“But it’s _bad_.” Draco slapped a hand on the forest floor beside him and didn’t even have the satisfaction of an impact, but he had to find a way to convince Harry. “You’ll be revolted by the sight of me, or by how long it takes me to recover.”

Harry growled. Draco swallowed and found himself holding very still, though Harry could have lunged at him in full wolf form with teeth bared and it wouldn’t have done anything. Some human instincts were unconnected to a physical body, he decided.

“How _dare_ you,” Harry said. His voice was low enough that Draco had to concentrate very carefully on the individual words. Of course, at the moment he had plenty of incentive to concentrate. He could imagine all too well what would happen to his state of mind and body if Harry was angry enough to turn his back on Draco. “You think that I’ve watched people change into wolves without flinching and been able to get used to the way their bodies warp, and somehow still carried along this obsessive concern for purity and whole limbs? I don’t care. It won’t end, unless you want it to end because the big bad wolf is too dirty and _marred_ for you. I want to protect you. I like you. I’m going to continue to do both.” He paused, and Draco had to look away because his eyes were too fiery to meet. “Unless you want it to end,” he repeated with slow deliberation.

Draco shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “I want to be rescued.”

“And after?” Harry’s voice was low and ugly. “Would it be too much effort for you to associate with werewolves? Too much of a trauma?”

“Stop it!” Draco snapped, turning to him. “Of course it won’t. You know that I’m attracted to you, and I’ve given all my reasons why. They include the fact that you’re a werewolf as much as they exist in spite of it.”

“Then stop speaking as if I could be any shallower.” Harry twitched in a way that made Draco think he was trying to flatten his ears. “I’m attracted to you. It’ll go on being that way. We’ll rescue you, yes, and after that we’ll continue to be with you.” He held out a hand, and the fuzzy aura surrounded it that meant he’d made it real for Draco. “Or just me, if you don’t want the rest of the pack.”

Draco reached out and put his hand in Harry’s without hesitation. Harry closed his eyes at the sensation, as if _he_ were the one who had been deprived of friendly physical contact for months. Draco had to smile in spite of himself at the ecstasy on Harry’s face. 

“I don’t even know if I can survive at this point,” he said. “I might die of my wounds as you rescue me. It seems a little premature to be arguing about who’s going to abandon who.”

“Then don’t bring it up again,” Harry said, with frozen dignity that he immediately undermined by taking Draco’s hand into his own and rubbing it as if he could warm the fingers. He bowed his head so that he could look at their hands exclusively.

Draco bowed his head, too, and let it rest on Harry’s shoulder, even though he couldn’t feel that part of him. He was in the mood for comfort of many different kinds.

*

“Do not do anything stupid.”

Draco blinked and turned around. He’d come to the clearing as usual that morning, but found Harry out for a run with the pack. He’d settled down on the grass to wait for him, and thought that the rest of the werewolves were gone.

Now he realized that Hyacinth had been resting in one of the houses, so still that Draco hadn’t seen or heard her. She came out now on all fours and stared directly at him. It was only a few days before the full moon, and so the beast saw him through her eyes, Draco knew.

“I’m not planning to,” Draco said defensively. “I plan to survive until you rescue me, and then I don’t really care what my father does.”

“I can’t hear you,” Hyacinth said. She shook her ragged clothes the way a dog would when shedding water, and fixed her nostrils, more than her eyes, on Draco. “I can hardly see you, for that matter. But I know you are there, and I thought it best to warn you. You are important to Harry, and therefore to me. If you do something stupid, you are likely to die, and Harry would not survive that. Not the way he is now,” she added, as if she had seen Draco opening his mouth to dispute that. “Not as the lord of the balance between human and wolf. He would become a monster, giving in to the wolf’s bloody instincts, because it is the only refuge available to someone with a grave disappointment and our condition. I know,” she finished, with a sound of burned bitterness in her voice.

Draco licked his lips. “I really can’t do much about whether I live or die, you know,” he said. He knew that she couldn’t hear him, but in case Harry came back, he wanted to show that he was willing. Just not _able_.

“He has never been so strongly drawn to anyone,” Hyacinth said. She sat back on her haunches and licked at the curve of her elbow. Draco blinked. The action was completely unselfconscious. He didn’t think she would have done that last month, when she was struggling so hard against her wolf. “Celia and Josh don’t understand it. Leila has only a minimal grasp of the reason and insists on questioning him. But _I_ know that you have the potential to make Harry happy. That is enough for me.” She glanced up at him, and her eyes had gone entirely yellow, except for swimming flakes of scarlet that made Draco think she’d swallowed blood. “See that you do it. Do not try to claw your way free unless you have no choice. Do not despair. Do not tamely give in to your father.”

Again, Draco tried to answer, but this time he was actually bereft of words. Hyacinth paused, tilting her head, her eyes bright and curious.

“If you are worried about not being able to survive the final rescue,” she said, “you should not be. The werewolf changes all it comes into contact with. It heals them. If you are deeply wounded, then we can make sure you survive.” 

And then Hyacinth turned her head to the far side of the clearing and whined in welcome, so Draco turned around without trying to get her to explain what she meant. He didn’t want Harry to think that he’d been doubting him again.

Harry stood there with the rest of the pack behind him. Despite the fact that they were all on two legs, Draco could see the animal in them, how the rest of them were oriented on Harry and ready to move at a word. Hyacinth rose to her feet without prompting and stepped closer, her eyes bright and fixed on Harry, her nostrils quivering.

“Draco,” Harry said, smiling at him. Draco caught his breath and was afraid that he whimpered like another wolf. Harry was _irresistibly_ attractive when he smiled, all his power surging through it as if it alone could compel obedience. “Watch.”

He dropped his head back as if he were sunbathing and spread his arms. The rest of the pack responded at the same time, but spread their arms in different directions—to show that they were capable of acting independently, Draco supposed. Harry closed his eyes and gave a short howl.

Five different auras of strength spread out, mingling like sprays of water from different faucets. They whirled around the clearing and encircled Draco, who found himself shivering as he watched the results.

Hyacinth sprang into the air and came down as lightly as a leaf on Harry’s left side. Leila had jumped at the same time, and though one of her legs gave way slightly and slowed her—probably the result of that old wound Harry had mentioned—she still managed to avoid Hyacinth even as she jumped past her and came down on Harry’s right.

Celia and Josh leaped forwards with a speed that Draco knew was impossible even for werewolves, somersaulted three times before they hit the ground, and ended up on all fours in front of Draco. Their mouths were wide in exultant, ferocious smiles, but not exactly the same smile. What Harry wanted to happen had come true, Draco realized with wonder. The pack acted all at once, aware of each other’s movements, but not in a way that would make them _depend_ on each other. Not exactly the same.

Equal, but not identical.

Harry opened his eyes and smiled at Draco more brightly than before. If the power pulsing through the glade hadn’t already rendered him speechless, that smile would have.

“It did what I thought it would do,” Harry said. “The practice, I mean. It not only allows us to act together, it _increases_ our strength, our speed, and our magic. We’re being fed from four directions at once, and so all together we’re more than the sum of our parts and more than make up for the strength we expend.” He closed his eye in a slow wink at Draco. “That was why I wanted to know about the weak places and seams in the wards on the Manor. I know that you have defenses against werewolves, and even packs. But those are meant for _ordinary_ werewolves and ordinary packs. What do you think is going to happen when the force of a pack _five times as strong as usual_ hits them all at once?”

Draco still couldn’t speak.

But he _could_ go up to Harry and put his arms around him in wonder and delight—

And because of the strength in the clearing, it was no trouble at all for Harry to make his arms real enough to pick Draco up and spin him around in a wild dance that ended in a kiss, while the rest of the pack howled in triumph.


	7. Chapter 7

The full moon.

Draco knew it would rise that night even before his father came into the latest torture chamber pale with excitement, even before he remembered that Harry had told him yesterday that he would only have one more day of torture to endure. It was as though the moon was connected to the tide of blood in his veins and made it surge and dance and run with flames. Draco turned his head towards the window of the room, interested for the first time in a long time about what he could see from the Manor instead of from outside it.

“You feel it, don’t you, my child?” Lucius whispered, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. He laughed giddily a moment later and leaned his head down so that his cheek rubbed against Draco’s. “No reason you should not. The full moon is near, and its light means your freedom. Malfoys have always been sensitive to changes in their personal fortunes.” He chuckled, ruffled Draco’s hair, and pulled back so that he could turn to a cabinet full of differently colored vials. If Draco squinted, he could see a dangerous shimmer of heat and fumes above most of the potions.

 _I hope that you aren’t sensitive to the change of a bunch of werewolves invading your sanctuary_ , Draco told his father mentally, and whispered, “Sir, I feel afraid when I don’t know what you plan to do. Can’t you give me a _hint_ of what kind of spell or ritual you’re going to perform?”

Lucius smiled kindly back at him. “Forgive me, Draco, but I think ignorance the better protection for you in this case. Your mind would try to second-guess mine if you knew everything.” He drew out a vial that was bright poison-green, looked at it critically for a moment, and then put it back on the shelf. “And this ritual is so delicate that the mental energy of the participants needs to be as calm and as united as possible.”

Draco frowned and shifted in his chains. “But we me afraid and you confident, does that mean that we’ll be calm together?”

Lucius chuckled again and gave him the same kind of glance he’d given the potion: flat and critical and dismissing him as an unfit participant in whatever magic he had in mind. “We both want you free of the Dark magic,” he said. “That’s enough union for the ritual.” He smiled again, but this time it was more like the mad grins Draco had become used to seeing from him. “The twist is coming soon, Draco.”

 _Yes_ , Draco thought, watching with a sharp ache in his heart as his father saw himself reflected in the glass of one of the vials and paused to stare at his own face. _Yes, it is_.

Then he closed his eyes and leaped free of his body so that he could tell Harry what he had learned about the ritual, small though the crumbs of information were.

*

“You’ve done very well, Draco.”

Draco closed his eyes and let his head sag forwards with a sigh. He felt a bit stupid accepting comfort from Harry in this situation, when all _he_ had to do was wait. Harry was the one who had to coordinate an attack and worry about his people and whether Lucius’s traps would manage to kill one of them.

Harry’s voice sharpened, and the hands he’d made real for Draco and was smoothing up and down his face clamped down, making Draco wince with unexpected pain. “Don’t start thinking that your life is unimportant compared to the lives of my pack. It’s not the case, and I won’t have you thinking it.” He crouched down in front of Draco until Draco had no choice but to look at him. “If you start thinking that, do you know what I’ll be obliged to do?”

“Not rescue me?” Draco whispered, trying desperately to crack a smile.

Harry’s teeth snapped near his ear, enough to make Draco flinch. Harry leaned back on his heels, breathing deeply. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never want to frighten you. But please don’t joke about that, Draco. I can’t bear the thought that you might come to believe it.” He ducked his head until his chin rested on his folded arms and stared at Draco broodingly.

“All right, I apologize,” Draco said. He could _see_ the power around Harry now, even when he wasn’t concentrating, settling on his shoulders like a furry green-grey cloak. “This can’t be easy for you, either, since you’re trying to control your natural instincts.” He hesitated as Harry gave him a quick, grateful smile, then added, “And how does the rest of the pack feel about this? Really? I know Hyacinth doesn’t care as long as you’re happy, but don’t Celia and Josh resent being asked to spy?”

Harry leaned back and looped his arms around his knees. “The rest of the pack understands balance,” he said quietly. “I rescued them and taught them to manage their wolves and gave them a place to have hope and survive when they’d thought that they might never have that again. In return, they let me have the greatest chance at pure happiness I’ve had since I was changed.” He lifted his head to glare challengingly at Draco. “And they understand strength, if they don’t understand balance or friendship. They know that I’m strong enough to take what I want by myself, to rescue you if they won’t help.”

Draco stared at him in concern. Harry’s eyes were wild and glittering; they looked like tunnels into an ocean with the sunlight playing on it. Draco remembered the way Harry had stood poised in the clearing with the pack around him, their strength overlapping each other’s, and shook his head. “I think it’s best if you come with the others.”

“And I will.” Harry gave him a smile that melted almost the moment it showed up. “But you wanted to know what they thought, and I told you.”

Draco closed his eyes. He desired to sit forever in the reassurance that Harry’s aura of power gave him, but he knew that he couldn’t. So he settled for saying, “Do you think that you’ll really manage to rescue me?”

Harry’s head bumped against his, in a gesture that wiped clean the memory of Lucius nudging his cheek that morning. “Yes.”

Draco didn’t need any ornaments on that sentence, no extra words. He put his arms around Harry’s neck and held him there, self-satisfied and content.

At least, content until Harry leaned towards him and whispered, “And you’ve been braver than you know, stronger than I can easily think about, so I don’t have to ask if you’ll manage to wait until we get there.”

Harry’s aura of strength meant the tears that soaked down Draco’s face and into his hair were unfortunately real.

*

It was time.

Draco hung shivering in his bonds as Lucius arranged a circle of potions and small, irregular objects—golden blocks and silver mirrors and what looked like obsidian arrowheads—in front of him. The chains were different from anything he’d ever been bound by, made of crystal. Draco could feel the hum of magic in them without concentrating. The soft sunset light coming in through the windows seemed to energize the chains, and Draco wondered for a moment how Harry and the pack would get him out of them even if they managed to fight their way past the Manor’s wards.

 _Which I’m no longer confident they will._ When he was with his father instead of Harry, it was easy to pick up on Lucius’s supreme ease and belief that nothing could possibly disrupt his plans.

“Ah, my son.” Lucius stood up with a potion in a vial, the same poison-green one that he’d rejected earlier that day as not being good enough, and smiled at Draco. The smile was the sanest that Draco had seen him give in months. Not that that changed anything, Draco thought. His father was still mad. And he proved it when he held the potion out, shook it, listened as though for chimes moving in the liquid, and added with a luxurious sigh, “And soon you will be free of the Dark magic, and thus of your chains. I apologize for binding you,” he added, with an anxious look, “but it is the only way for me to be safe from you.”

Draco wanted to laugh. _Yes, because I’m the dangerous one_. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back, wondering for a moment if he should go outside the Manor to guide the pack to him. He was in a room on the second floor, a large one that had probably been intended originally for a ballroom. Draco had found himself losing some of the memories of his home as Lucius tortured him. It was a random place, and perhaps Harry would be tempted first to look in the dungeons.

 _If they even manage to get through the wards_.

Draco told himself not to think that way, but he was reduced to shivering convulsively as Lucius began to build a circle around him, chanting steadily in Latin all the while. If there was one thing his father had always been good at, it was holding long and complex incantations in his mind, and that talent, like so many of the others that were inconvenient for Draco, hadn’t died with his sanity. Draco watched glittering blue lines of light leap from one object to the other, and his shivering built to the point that the chains rattled.

“Do not be afraid,” Lucius said, during a pause in the incantation. “I promise that soon you will be free, perhaps even before the full moon reaches midnight.” Then he returned to the spell, and gave Draco a new fear.

 _Is that enough time for Harry and the pack to get through the wards_? Draco bit his lower lip, what was left of it, and turned his head so that he could look at the window again. The sunset light had grown brighter, but he didn’t know if the full moon had risen yet, and how long it would take the pack to recover from the change if it had. How close were they? Had Hyacinth challenged Harry again and needed to be subdued? What would happen if the pack changed their minds once they transformed, or rebelled against Harry’s leadership right now?

It was no use, no matter how many times he told himself that his fear probably only fed his father’s ritual. He had to leave, had to go see what the pack was doing. He closed his eyes and shot his spirit forth from his body.

*

He was glad that he had come when he saw them, and not because of his own fear. They were magnificent. 

The pack, all in wolf form, stood not far from the weakest point in the wards, a seam on a corner of Malfoy Manor where two wards overlapped. It was also far from any of the defenses that were meant specifically to counter werewolves. Draco looked at their bodies boiling together, their power rising around them in auras that turned the air dark. Celia, Josh, and Leila were anxious, and it showed in their waving tails and the stamping of their slender legs.

Hyacinth and Harry stood alone together in the front of the pack, a match for each other, one black, one scarlet, so _large_ that Draco found himself shivering as he hovered above them. They were both still, as if all their restlessness had been distilled into the three inferior wolves of the pack. They might have been statues, save for the way the wind flattened their fur against their bodies and the wild, brilliant gleam in their eyes.

Harry tilted his head back and _howled_.

The sound traveled through Draco’s mind like a spear, and apparently through the minds of the rest of the pack like a cast net. Hyacinth’s head tilted back first, but the others weren’t far behind, and then they wove their voices with Harry’s. Soaring, shining, changing in Draco’s perception from sound to light as they arose, they were a challenge and a call to courage. Draco found himself longing to laugh, even though the sound also held him still with the solemnity of it.

Harry looked up and saw him, giving a single grave nod of his huge head. Draco felt a flash of purest love. _In the moment of the attack, he still remembers me. Of course he does. I should never have doubted it._

Harry took a step forwards, then reared slightly like a horse before he charged, probably to build up extra momentum. The rest of the pack spread out around him, until Harry stood at the head of a pentagon. Then they lowered their heads and sped forwards at the same moment. Their power rippled over them in a sparking dome that made Draco breathless. He could see the silvery light dancing off their coats, almost lost in the shadows and pink light of sunset.

They met the wards.

Celia and Josh howled in pain, but continued to strain forwards. Leila hung suspended in the air, her paws cycling wildly, her tongue hanging out of her jaws. All the fur on Hyacinth’s head was standing up, and she snarled like a monster out of the fairy tales that his mother used to tell Draco, her eyes unmixed scarlet.

Harry hit the wards, and for a second a sheet of lightning surrounded him. There came a flash so bright that Draco flickered away in instinctive defense.

Then he heard the creaking and cracking of a falling plane of stone, and Harry howled in rage and pain and triumph, before breaking into the belling cry that Draco had heard him use when they were hunting the doe through the forest.

The flash cleared. Draco, now hanging above the trees some distance away, could see a smoking hole in the air, surrounded by golden spiraling threads. The wards had broken and were unraveling all over the walls of the Manor.

Harry stood on the other side of the dissolving magic and howled to encourage his pack, who piled after him, no longer restrained by the defenses they had set out to destroy. Hyacinth was yelping, thunderous sounds that were probably as close as she could come to barking. Leila had all four paws on the ground and laughed with her tongue lolling out, before she shot forwards to stand at Harry’s right shoulder. Celia and Josh trotted along at the back, their strides matched, their eyes blinking and their fur singed.

Draco darted out so that he could drift directly above them. Harry tilted his head back, and those wide golden eyes, with the slightest trace of green, found Draco.

“My father has me in a large room on the second floor,” Draco called. “Look for several windows in a row with bars in the shape of a cross on them.”

Harry howled in response, and then he and the pack turned, running faster than anything on four legs should have been able to, moving around the house in the direction of his torture room. 

Draco shut his eyes. Then he flickered back into his body. There was no way that his father wouldn’t have felt the assault on the wards, and Draco had to know what he would do next.

*

“What in the name of Merlin.”

Lucius spoke the words in a flat tone that immediately made gooseflesh spring out on Draco’s skin in terror. When his father spoke like that, he was dangerous in either state of mind, mad or sane. 

Draco opened his eyes in time to see his father snatch up a candle from the table nearby and stare around. During the time Draco had watched the pack, the pink light of sunset had faded into murky purple shadows, so Draco needed the candle, too. Lucius examined the walls for several moments, as though he expected to find the source of the trouble in this room, and then raised his wand and murmured a spell that Draco recognized as a clairvoyance one.

“ _Werewolves_.”

There was such incredulity in his tone, such outrage, that Draco could easily imagine him asking how werewolves could have dared to interrupt his ritual. He laughed before he thought better of it.

Lucius spun around and stared at him. Draco shook his head, as much as he could in the chains, and said, “Werewolves, Father? Where would they have come from? They could be abroad tonight, of course, but why would they come here, of all places?”

“I do not know.” Lucius was taut now, looking from one window to the next. He lifted his wand as if he would cast a spell, then lowered it again in what looked like indecision. “This is the perfect room for the ritual,” he muttered, as if trying to convince himself. “But I cannot use if it I am interrupted. But as long as it is the night of the full moon and the werewolves do not come here, there is no need to move. Why would they come here? They will try the lower doors and windows first. They are mindless beasts, and there are such protections on this place as they cannot break through.” He nodded as if satisfied and returned to his Latin chant.

Draco glanced at the wide door that led into this room from the rest of the house. The yellow web of spells spun over it had not been disturbed by the wards falling. Similar yellow strands covered the windows. He feared that Lucius might be right.

He hesitated, wondering if the pack would know what the protective spells were if he simply described them. He hadn’t heard Lucius cast them, so he had no idea how to identify them more conclusively.

The stone of the wall under the windows cracked.

Draco turned to stare at it, pain radiating through every part of his body. It was not enough to dim the laughter that bubbled behind his lips. Harry hadn’t bothered with the windows or the door at all. He was going to come straight through the walls, which, with the wards fallen, were simply ordinary marble, and apparently couldn’t stand up to the weight of a werewolf.

Draco couldn’t stand it any longer. Once again, he left his body so that he could observe the pack from the outside. 

He was in time to see Harry’s paws leave the ground as he hurled himself up and like a boulder thrown by a catapult straight at the wall. It trembled and cracked. As Harry came down, Hyacinth rose in his place, and hit the weakened place he had just struck. The cracking sound repeated, and now Draco could see the hairline fractures speeding through the marble, touching each other, hesitating, and then spreading further.

He crowed, and saw Harry’s eyes briefly catch on him as he leaped again. Those golden-green eyes promptly grew brighter, and Harry lowered his head like a battering ram, as though the sight of Draco had given him strength.

Draco danced in place, then flickered back into the main room so that he could see what his father was doing.

Lucius faced the cracking wall, his mouth bent down at a sharp angle, his eyes distant, as though he were trying to recall the last time he had faced a situation like this and couldn’t. His wand went up and down. Draco saw his mouth form the syllables of first one spell and then another. Each one was discarded, because Draco doubted that he could make any spell fit the situation in the way that he wanted it to.

“Draco,” he murmured suddenly, and turned and looked at his son. “Draco, advise me. What is the best spell to hold off a gathering of werewolves? You must have studied those books more recently than I have, because I have never studied them.”

Draco collided with his body again, and had no trouble feigning a terrified expression. “I thought that the wards were supposed to keep them out.”

Lucius’s wand flicked, and the crystal chains tightened. Draco found it suddenly hard to breathe. The chain that crossed his chest must be pressing down. He coughed and kept on coughing until Lucius sighed and relented, loosening his bonds.

“You must try not to mock me, Draco,” he explained gently, stroking his wand. “The wards will not work in this case, because they are gone. There must be another way to face werewolves, and I want you to tell me what it is.”

Draco bit his lip. “Doesn’t silver hurt them?” _Harry, forgive me. But he might kill me if I don’t give him something likely._

Lucius relaxed with a chuckle. “It does indeed! I did not think of that.” He turned and began to chant at the far wall, opposite the one Harry and Hyacinth were cracking. As Draco watched, enormous silver spearheads formed there, aimed at the pack. He shuddered as he imagined them launching and transfixing the werewolves.

He flashed out of his body again and yelled. Harry, who stood on the ground, tilted his head back in inquiry. Hyacinth came down from her leap and looked in some irritation from her leader to Draco.

“My father is using silver spearheads to anticipate you,” Draco shouted. “I don’t know what you can do to stop that—”

Harry uttered a series of short howls. Celia, Josh, and Leila stepped up close behind him, and Hyacinth stepped sideways so that her shoulder brushed Harry’s. Draco tried to swallow his jealousy. Harry howled again, a long, ululating sound, and the ripples of power rose like a fountain, cascading around him.

Harry’s paws left the ground again, but he hadn’t jumped this time.

Draco watched open-mouthed as he soared, using his outstretched legs and his tail to direct himself, straight at the crack in the wall. The power was visible around him as fuzzy purple lightning, crackling and catching in his ears and ruff.

Harry slammed into the stone with an impact that made Draco wince. But the werewolf magic was with him, the way it had been when the pack took down the wards, freely yielded by his followers, who loved him just as Draco did. The stone turned to dust where he touched it, and the windows sagged as the wall supporting them vanished. Harry soared straight through and into the room beyond.

Draco willed himself to hover above Lucius’s head. He was there in less time than it took to make the wish, and so got to see the moment when his father and Harry first confronted each other.

Lucius’s gaping mouth and widened eyes were all he could have wished for.

Harry, however, was not looking at Lucius. He had his head turned and was staring at Draco’s body on the torture rack. Draco looked with him, too much in tune not to. He had to look away again when he saw bones and bits of skin there, nothing more. That glance was enough to tell him that he would never walk again, and probably wouldn’t have survived if not for the constant application of healing magic.

Harry turned back to Lucius, and his growl made the floor shake.

The hole behind him pulsed with red, and then Hyacinth was stalking up next to Harry, her teeth showing white through the scarlet fur around her mouth, her coat on end, her paws moving silently, the aura of power around her transforming her into a creature of blood and fire.

The rest of the pack howled encouragement from beyond the hole. 

For a long moment, the confrontation trembled on a dagger’s edge.

Then Harry and Hyacinth charged.

And Lucius launched the silver spearheads.


	8. Chapter 8

Draco felt a scream building up in his throat. He was never sure if he actually uttered it, because at that point, things moved outside him, and very quickly.

Harry and Hyacinth jumped at the same time, their bodies trailing small lines of black energy of the kind that Draco had felt build up around them earlier. They soared easily over the silver spearheads, and came down on the other side, much closer to Lucius, their mouths open so far that Draco could see the red lining inside their throats before they swept past him and at his father.

Lucius immediately raised a Shield Charm. Harry pulled up in front of it and dashed around to the side, looking for the place where the Charm ended and he could get through. Lucius whirled to face him, his wand dancing, his tongue curling around words that made Draco flinch just listening to them.

Hyacinth put down her head and bulled straight through the shield.

Sparks leaped around her, blue-white and devastating. But though Draco saw a fire start in her fur and smoke billow into her eyes, she never paused. She drove on, though her movement slowed for a moment as though molasses had surrounded her, and the foam dripping from her jaws turned as red as her fur. She roared, once, a sound that would have been at home in a lion’s throat.

And the shield broke.

Hyacinth snapped her jaws open and closed them again in Lucius’s calf. Draco knew she could have killed him without much fuss, knocked him to the ground and stepped on him or ripped his throat open.

She didn’t. Instead, she opened a wound that went all the way through Lucius’s leg and then jumped back, yipping contemptuously as he aimed his wand at her. 

Lucius staggered, but caught his balance a moment later. His eyes were wide and clear and not at all frightened. Draco saw him aim his wand again and begin to speak a spell that would blast Hyacinth out of existence.

Then Harry bit his hip from the other side.

Draco wanted to laugh, though the only noise that came out of his throat was a bubbling one that probably didn’t qualify as amused. He had forgotten that wolves were pack hunters. Lucius would never be able to face one of them alone. He would have to deal with two at the least, and probably more than that, the moment the rest of the pack could get into the house.

And it was all too obvious that Harry had told his packmates not to finish the prey off quickly.

Harry turned a flip in the air to avoid the spell that Lucius aimed at him, a zigzag Blasting Curse that dented the floor right near his paws. Next, he crowded in close, growling in a way that Draco thought was playful. Then he caught a glimpse of Harry’s eyes, and suddenly the urge to laugh went away.

Hyacinth dodged in from the front, and landed a minor bite on Lucius’s knee, forcing him to turn around again. For a few moments, in fact, Harry and Hyacinth kept him dancing, unable to confront them both at once or coordinate his efforts to hold still, the air full of their snarls and their wagging tails and his flying blood. 

Then Lucius backed into a corner and set up a more powerful Shield Charm in front of himself. Hyacinth looked about to charge it anyway, but Harry held her back by laying a paw on her shoulder. Then he used a few heavy brushes of his body to beat out the fire in her coat and stood studying Lucius with his head lifted and his ears pricked. His tail waved slowly back and forth, as though he were trying to study the angles and decide the best way to come at Lucius.

Draco leaped free of his body again, so that he could see from above and warn them if Lucius did something especially clever.

His father had a bewildered, angry expression on his face, as if he could not comprehend how the universe could have turned so conclusively against him. Now and then his hand twitched around his wand, but each time, he changed his mind just as he was about to cast a coherent spell. His eyes kept darting back to Draco’s body on the frame of chains. Harry noticed and stepped in between the frame and Lucius, his head lifted until he and Lucius were eye-to-eye, his growl deeper and more threatening still.

“Don’t hold back on him for my sake,” Draco called. “You can make his death as bloody as you like. I think it’s the only way I’ll ever truly recover.”

Harry tilted his head to show that he heard Draco, and then moved away from the Shield Charm, still carefully blocking Lucius’s spell access to Draco. Hyacinth remained where she was for a moment, snarling, but Harry tugged at her hind legs and she joined him. Both of them watched from their new position, apparently to see what Lucius would do. But Lucius remained still. His father was mad, Draco knew, but not such a fool as to challenge two consummate predators with great stamina by running.

Then Harry uttered two sharp yelps. Hyacinth sighed between clenched teeth, nodded her head, and loped over to the frame where Draco hung. For moments, she paused with the black flares of light coiling around her fangs, and then leaned up and bit through the lowest of the crystal chains that held Draco in place.

Lucius said something incredulous and garbled. Then he took a step out of the corner, and the Shield Charm vanished.

Harry came forwards like black wind, his body flattened almost to the floor, his eyes furious, his teeth bared and shining.

Lucius went down, but from his shrieks, Draco knew that Harry hadn’t simply ripped out his throat and killed him. He was doing something else instead, and Draco adjusted his angle several times before he could see what it was.

Harry was eating into Lucius’s belly.

He had his paws sprawled wide, his claws resting on the edges of Lucius’s hips, his head bowed and his jaws opening and closing, chewing through ragged bits of flesh and skin. When he shook his head, blood flew around him, and Lucius let out a scream that had a disbelieving edge to it. He couldn’t accept that such pain existed in the world, that scream said.

“Yes,” Draco whispered, unable to take his eyes from the opening wound and the glimpses of dark red that he could see through it. “Yes, Harry, teach him to suffer the way that he taught me.”

Harry ripped out one more bit of flesh, then turned around and lifted his leg. A splashing yellow stream hit the wound. Lucius convulsed and screamed again, and Harry leaped lightly from his body and whirled around to face him.

Draco drifted over to hover at Harry’s shoulder. From this direction, he could see that the wound had stopped bleeding the moment Harry had urinated on it. The skin even had a marginally healthy color to it. What Harry had said about werewolf bodies possessing special properties to heal was true.

Harry didn’t want Lucius to die too quickly.

He prowled a few more steps forwards, his body hunched in a way that suggested he was going to leap off the floor any second, his spine flat and his tail raised and stiff. The growl coming out of his throat didn’t sound like anything Draco had heard before. He wondered if it had a special meaning, such as, “You are going to die with no chance to say your prayers.”

Lucius, his face blank with the overmastering rage that Draco knew he was feeling, raised his wand. 

“He’ll go for an offensive spell!” Draco called. “He’s too angry right now to think about defending himself.”

Harry didn’t seem to have heard him. He walked steadily forwards instead, his legs rising and falling as if they were the pistons of a machine. His mouth was open, his eyes so wide and so yellow that Draco found looking at them painful, like staring at the sun.

Lucius cast a curse that Draco didn’t know the formal name of. He knew it stripped off skin and muscle in the same blow, and that it hurt more than most of the tortures Lucius had used on him. He flinched and put himself between the curse and Harry, not even thinking that his astral body wasn’t physical and couldn’t block the magic.

Harry growled softly and stepped through Draco, giving him a surge of tingles. Black werewolf magic was glowing around him, making his legs look larger than they should and his head seem to float on a sea of stomclouds.

The curse struck him.

Draco opened his mouth to scream—and paused. The curse blew apart in the midst of the dark werewolf magic, the red struggling madly for a moment against the black before it faded. Then only spinning red motes were left, and they drifted farther and farther apart from each other, blinking bitterly until they dissipated.

Harry stood there, his legs braced as though he’d done nothing more than meet a desperate charge from a deer whose neck he’d snapped, and looked at Lucius.

Draco understood then. Harry knew perfectly well that he could resist wizard magic when he really tried, and he wanted to show Lucius that he could. He wanted to inflict terror on him as well as physical pain.

Lucius dragged himself backwards. The movement opened the wound in his belly again, and it began to bleed. Lucius didn’t seem to notice. His hand was shaking, and he couldn’t look away from Harry.

Harry lolled his tongue in amusement.

Lucius slumped sideways as if he’d fainted, but Draco saw his eyes still fluttering open to stare at the werewolf in horror. _Good_ , Draco thought viciously. _I wasn’t able to find escape in unconsciousness. I don’t want him to be able to._

Harry lowered his nose to the floor and held it there, so that his face was closer to being at Lucius’s level. Gradually, he pulled his tongue back inside his mouth and closed it. Then he, slowly, lifted his lips from his teeth.

Draco, standing to one side now so that he could see better, understood that gesture, too. Harry was showing Lucius the instruments of torture that would mean his death.

A thump came from behind them, and Draco looked over his shoulder to see that Hyacinth had bitten through the last chain and pulled his body from the frame. She stood guard over it on the floor, panting anxiously as she looked at Harry. Harry flicked her one glance that doubtless told her to stay where she was, because she settled down again, her fur almost flat now, one paw resting protectively on Draco’s shoulder.

Lucius tried to use the moment when Harry was distracted to hit him with another curse. Harry didn’t seem to need Draco’s strangled shout of warning, though, since he whirled about neatly on his heels and ducked his head. His jaws met on Lucius’s wrist.

In one chop, he bit off Lucius’s hand and tossed it across the room, wand and all, and then turned his head to bathe in the spray of blood from the severed limb.

Draco felt a deep, savage contentment as he watched. Yes. This was the end. After this, he would be _sure_ that Lucius could never hurt him again, in a way that he wouldn’t have been if Harry had simply killed his father with a single bite.

Lucius collapsed against the wall and whimpered. Harry stalked forwards on soft paws, eyes wide, mouth bared, jaws dripping. He gave Lucius plenty of time to see that death was coming, and that he could do nothing to stop it.

Lucius tried to shield his face with an arm as Harry leaped.

Draco heard bones crack, skin shred, and a strangled shriek. The arm had done nothing to slow Harry down, though it had given him something else to bite through when he tore Lucius’s throat out. 

Harry shook his head as though he were killing a rat, and then turned and howled as the blood hit his neck and teeth. For long moments, he looked like all of Draco’s more colorful fantasies of revenge, standing there and shining.

Then he lowered his head, shook himself all over, and trotted towards Hyacinth and Draco.

Draco drifted back with him and looked down at his body. His face was the only halfway normal thing on it, and even that bore the holes in the cheeks that Lucius had torn and widened the other day. The rest of his body…Draco shook his head. It looked as though he had been stripped to the bone over and over again, and covered with less replacement flesh each time. He knew there was no way he would ever be normal again. He could spend years recuperating in St. Mungo’s and not be normal. 

“I don’t know how to heal that,” he said, and turned to look at Harry. “I don’t think that you can, either, even if you piss on me.”

Harry’s hind leg twitched, as if he was considering trying it, but then he shook his head. He glanced at Hyacinth. She gazed back at him, her eyes wide, her ears up, and whimpered slightly. Draco wished that he could tell what they were thinking. Fuck, he wished they could _talk_.

“I…” he said, and stopped, because his voice was wavering. Lucius was dead. He was only beginning to realize what came after that, though. He had his freedom, but it wasn’t freedom to stand and walk away from the cage he’d lived in for so long. He had the cessation of pain, but that would only last until he went back into his body and someone started probing at him with healing spells. He had the license to use magic again, but that would depend on his being able to lift his arm. 

“What am I going to do?” he asked helplessly, and turned to look at Harry, instinctively, as the one in the recent past who had offered him solutions to his problems.

Harry gazed at him with fear in his eyes. Then Hyacinth whimpered again, and lifted a paw, scraping it through the air in a line parallel to Draco’s body. Harry glanced at her and showed his teeth. Hyacinth flattened her ears in the way that the other wolves of the pack did when submitting, but repeated the gesture.

“What is it?” Draco demanded. He knew enough to tell that there was an argument going on, though he didn’t know what it was about. “If there’s something you can do to save me, tell me what it is. I want to _live_. I know that it might take me years to live a normal life again, but at the moment, it doesn’t look like I’ll ever have that chance. Can you make it more likely?”

Harry stared into his eyes for so long that Draco wondered if he had forgotten what they were talking about. Draco swept a hand dramatically at his body. “We need to make a choice soon,” he snapped. “Without the healing magic that my father regularly gave me, then my body will simply decline and die. I had the impression that you didn’t want that to happen.”

Harry blinked and lowered his head. Then, watching Draco closely, he opened his jaws and held them above Draco’s shoulder.

He didn’t have to do anything else to tell Draco what his argument with Hyacinth had been about.

Draco caught his breath and blinked several times. He expected to feel tears prick along the edge of his eyelids, but of course he wasn’t going to feel that in his astral body. He expected to feel fear, even terror, but he felt only excitement.

“You could make me into a werewolf,” he said.

Harry immediately backed away from Draco’s body and tossed his head to show that he wasn’t happy about doing this. Then he sat down like a large, tame dog and watched Draco with heartsick golden eyes.

Draco drifted towards the floor and sat down as best as he could when he knew that he would inevitably drift a bit above its level. His gaze went back and forth from Harry to his body. He looked at Hyacinth then, and she bobbed her head enthusiastically and scraped her paw along the floor. Draco knew that she approved, probably because she thought he made Harry happy and it would be easier for him to do that as a werewolf. 

The rest of the pack, having sent up a single howl of triumph from beyond the wall when Harry killed Lucius, was silent. If they knew there was a possibility of this—and Draco thought they probably had—they didn’t seem to have any objections.

Draco closed his eyes and began to reason aloud. “I would suffer the same discrimination from society that you do, even if I learn how to balance my human and wolf, because no one will believe that I can do anything of the kind. I’ll be able to tell my secret to very few people other than the pack. I’ll struggle with the wolf, the hunger, the physical need, that you told me about.”

Harry gave a small growl that Draco took as confirmation. He opened his eyes and looked at the floor through his transparent fingers.

“You told me that the change takes away minor magical talents, too,” he said. “Your Parseltongue. Celia’s ability to become a Metamorphmagus.” He could hear his breath quickening, and didn’t care. This was the most important decision he had ever made. He was allowed to be a little excited about it. “I won’t be able to astrally travel any more, whereas I might if I kept my own body.”

Harry extended his head and bobbed it up and down in an exaggerated nod. Then he rubbed his nose against Draco’s cheek, using enough magic to make the contact physical, before he pulled back.

“So much to sacrifice,” Draco whispered. Then he reached out and laid a hand on the forehead of his physical body, though of course he couldn’t feel it.

“But I’ve been sacrificed for so many reasons already,” he said, “reasons that were none of my choosing. My father stole my peace and my body. I won’t sleep without nightmares for the rest of my life. I’ll always have scars. I’ll always have disabilities. And I don’t know that that’s something I could put up with, when I’ve got used to the freedom from pain that my astral body gave me.”

Harry moved a step forwards. He growled again. Draco nodded to him. “I know that there will be the pain that comes from changing into a wolf,” he said. “But that’s nothing compared to what I’ve already put up with.”

He smiled, and lifted his hand to touch Harry on the head. The fur was soft against his palm one way when he stroked it, rough the other, and stiff and matted in some places because of the blood. Harry watched him all the while as if Draco was the one with the power to rip out his throat, his body shaking slightly.

“I’ll be with you if I’m a werewolf,” Draco whispered. “How could you ask me to make any other decision?” He leaned heavily against Harry. “Bite me, please.”

Harry was quivering as he took a step forwards and lowered his head. Draco clung to him as long as he could, then leaped back into his physical body. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to be caught outside it when the change came.

Agony assaulted him from every direction. Draco fell back, writhing. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t think he had the strength. He could _feel_ the life leaving his body, no longer dammed and held at bay by Lucius’s healing magic.

Harry’s jaws crunched down and through his shoulder, only another note in the symphony of pain.

And then, something new happened.

Draco felt searing warmth radiate away from the bite. With the heat came the sensation of another mind forced through his body, a new blood transfused into his veins, and a second being awakening within him.

The new being did not like the fact that the body it shared was in less than peak physical condition. It rolled over twice, gathering power, and then Draco cried out in wonder as grey clouds engulfed him.

He felt his bones taken and molded in godly hands. His body quivered, stretched, and relaxed. He bent and flowed into anguish again, but it was a new kind of anguish, blinding white, and he seemed to ascend steadily towards the sun as it swept through him. His back arched and lengthened, his face responded with its own lengthening, and he shuddered and kept on shuddering, the tremors traveling to the ends of his limbs, or what was left of them.

New knowledge dropped into his mind. These were the ways to hunt; these were the ways to leap and change direction in midair; this was the secret of running on four legs. This was the link to the full moon, and this was the way he would relate to other werewolves. Draco stood under a waterfall of secrets, and felt them transform him into a new person mentally as well as physically, giving him a replacement for the spells he had forgotten as he sustained brain damage under Lucius’s tender mercy.

The new being found the brain damage inside his skull, and burned it out, cauterizing the wounds and raising new channels in their place. It was the most awe-inspiring thing Draco had ever felt. He cried out again, and this time the sound emerged from a new place in his throat and with a new depth to it.

He shook his head and stood up on shaky legs. He looked around, sniffing, his eyes appreciating new shades of color, and then tottered forwards so that he could see himself in the shattered remains of the glass vials Lucius had set out.

A lean silver wolf looked back at him. He was only a few inches shorter than Hyacinth or Harry, but the aura of power he carried within himself was more compressed. His eyes looked like the yellow light that sometimes covered the sky before a storm. The fur along his ruff and streaming back towards his flanks was grey tapering to white. His ears lifted and lowered with deadly grace; he showed his fangs, and they were whiter than his fur. 

He took a step sideways, eyes on the reflection, and it did not hurt to walk.

Draco knew that, usually, victims of a werewolf bite did not change immediately; their first transformation would come with the next full moon. But the magic had probably seen no other way to spare his life than by taking him immediately into his new body. Meanwhile, at least if Draco remembered the magical theory behind werewolves right, his human body was resting in what was essentially another dimension, and would heal of its wounds by the time the sunrise came.

He was free.

And he had—

He turned his head to the side, and Harry was already there, slamming into him with a shoulder and rocking him on his feet. Draco lifted his head, and, for the first time, their tongues twined together in the open air. 

Harry was looking at him as if he were the center of the universe.

Draco knew there would be problems to come. Among other things, there were the questions the Aurors would ask when they found Lucius dead, and the hunt they would surely launch for werewolf packs. Harry’s pack would have to be careful to attract no attention for a time and leave no trace of themselves that could be linked to the killing. Draco knew they probably already had arrangements set up for when they became human again and could cast spells, but if not, he would suggest it.

For the moment, he did not care.

He was free, and he had Harry.

He lifted his head and _howled_ , the sound rising chill and pure and whole from his toes. Hyacinth joined him a moment later, her voice smug.

Then the rest of the pack sang from the base of the wall.

And last of all came Harry, his voice surrounding and captaining and chasing the rest of theirs, thick with strength, thick with rejoicing.

End.


End file.
